


I will be your: hands, eyes, heart

by thewarlocksbitch



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Drug Use, First Kiss, Getting Together, Irish Folklore, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Sex Dreams, Slow Burn, Street Racing, abuse mention, scar mention, the dream pack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-12-03 23:25:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 59,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11542602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewarlocksbitch/pseuds/thewarlocksbitch
Summary: the pynch flower shop/tattoo parlor au no one asked for, with some added college, ghost, and glendower shenanigans. basically, this is my take on how the gang would have come together if things had happened when they were college age, rather than high school.note: yes, adam is a sex worker and no, this is not a major plot point in the fic. it's just a job





	1. an unstable stasis

Adam had told himself at the beginning of term that he would regret his late-night classes.

Between study groups, classes, and his two jobs – his _three_ jobs, if he counted the unofficial one – Adam was living off spare change and sheer willpower only a few weeks into the semester.

He hadn't planned for things to be this way. Adam Parrish's way was well thought out, analyzed from every angle, viciously scrutinized to ensure there were no flaws in its structure.

He'd always planned to go to college, even when circumstances forced him into a low grade high school. But he didn't need to rely on his school's prestige when he made better grades than any other student. The colleges he wanted so badly to attend would see that he had worked for this, that he was worthy. Adam would pay half of the tuition, and they would graciously pour the rest into his waiting palms.

But then his mother found his pay stub from one of his jobs during his freshman year at Aglionby, and Adam's father tightened the leash around his neck to choking.

Adam had valiantly kept his grades up, but he'd made less and less money as his father sabotaged his carefully constructed work connections and, in the summer before Adam's sophomore year, began stealing from him. Having less money meant Adam hadn't had enough for Aglionby’s tuition. He’d been forced to attend the nearby public school, Mountain View High, from sophomore year onwards.

He still managed to get a scholarship at one of his choice schools - the University of Virginia - but the numbers in his bank account were not what he'd originally planned for. His scholarship covered much of his classes and on-campus housing, along with an included meal plan, but to keep it next year Adam needed near perfect grades. He needed books. And he needed some fourteen thousand dollars to fill in the gap the scholarship left.

The meager sum Adam had saved during high school despite his father wasn't enough. Staying late after most of his classes to act as the teacher's assistant and in turn earn free hours wasn't enough. Skipping parties and dinner to check his homework and check it again wasn't enough. Working as an apprentice and step-in artist at the local tattoo parlor wasn't enough.

So Adam made a third job for himself that paid well and didn’t take up any more of his time.

It was Thursday night, and late enough that the teaching hall was dark by the time Adam's professor dismissed him. His unfinished homework sat heavy in his bag and his stomach growled, but more pressing was the seventy-five dollars he didn't have for a textbook he needed to finish paying off by tomorrow.

He didn't bother checking his watch as he climbed onto his bike. He pedaled absently until he was off campus, then headed for the tattoo parlor. It rarely ever closed before midnight.

Nights in the middle of Charlottesville, Virginia were quiet and intimate things, full of just-ending book club meetings and streets becoming dark and then darker as shops closed. Adam hummed to himself as his shitty bike stumbled over the smooth sidewalk and jerked itself across the walkway.

He'd intended to buy a new one his first day on campus, but as he'd walked out the door his roommate - though he hadn't known Noah Czerny was his roommate at the time - passed him, said, "You're thinking about buying a new bike? Don't do that. Mine just got stolen." And then he slipped past Adam and into their room, and Adam went to the library to find used bikes on a public computer.

So Adam rode his shitty bike everywhere and never worried about it being stolen. He left it leaning against the short alleyway behind the tattoo parlor and let himself in through the back.

Inside, the parlor wasn't unkempt and unsanitary as many expected it to be. It was a small space, with two rooms in the back for larger jobs and half a dozen chairs in the front for smaller ones.

Magazines of expensive cars and girls stacked on top of each other on racks next to posters of tattoo designs. One lone plant lurked in the far corner, stubbornly green despite being fed cigarette butts and stale soda more often than water. Adam ran his fingers along one of its long, smooth leaves on his way to the counter.

He spent most of his time here as a counter boy answering phone calls, cleaning, and doing lunch and coffee runs. Occasionally he did smaller jobs as an apprentice artist. The pay was good, especially when clients tipped him like they were supposed to, but it wasn't enough.

So Adam gave the occasional hand or blowjob behind the parlor when money was tight.

His boss, a fanciful woman with endless white hair and tattoos on every inch of her skin, was either working with a client in the back or on another one of her mysterious road trips. Adam and the other workers often never knew where she was. On Adam's pay days, it was less unusual for him to find his paycheck in his shoe or hidden under the keyboard than for it to be handed to him.

He slipped past a few of his coworkers, careful not to disrupt them from the skin under their hands, and settled himself behind the counter. He arranged and rearranged the pens. He threw old receipts away. He pulled up a game of solitaire on the computer but quickly bored of it and shut it down. He’d done everything he could on his shift yesterday, from cleaning the tools to buying everyone coffee to tattooing a butterfly on an old woman's ankle. There was nothing left for him to do. Technically he wasn't working today.

But this was where his clients knew to find him.

"Hey," a familiar voice said. Adam looked up as a man came to lean lazily against the counter.

Adam remembered him paying well.

"Hi," he returned easily, leaning on his exhaustion so that his voice came out husky and loose. "I was hoping you'd come back to see me. You left so quick last time I didn't get your name."

The man grinned. Adam resisted the urge to cringe away from him. He was nice, and cleaner than most of the other men that called on Adam. But they all had the same predatory look in their eyes, and Adam hated it. "You working the back tonight?"

Adam leaned forward and smiled. He let his breath warm over the man's inked neck. "I am if you want me to."

+

The hallway of Adam’s dorm was brightly lit when he got there, but the dark sliver of space between his door and the floor told him that his roommate and situational best friend, Noah Czerny, was asleep. Adam took his key from his pocket and slid it into the lock, careful not to scrape it on anything; Noah was an incredibly light sleeper, and Adam despaired of accidentally waking him.

Adam closed the door behind him with a soft _click_. His stomach growled. Distantly he tried to remember when he’d last eaten. The bag of chips between his two morning classes? He wanted to make himself something quick, but he needed to get at least a few hours sleep and making a sandwich would be too noisy, anyways.

He padded over to where a lamp was still on and pulled its cord; Noah always left a light on for him so that he wouldn’t be in the dark when he often came home late. Adam could see Noah in the dark, the faint outline of his shapeless form under his comforter, the almost-white color of his hair where it fell over his pillow.

Noah’s bed was directly opposite Adam’s, with their shared desk in the space between, though Adam used it much more often than Noah. Across the room was a tiny kitchen, equipped with a sink, a fridge, a microwave, and a box full of individually packaged snacks Noah had bought but never touched; he was always telling Adam he was welcome to them and even went as far as sneaking protein bars into Adam’s bag when he knew Adam was working.

Adam grabbed two protein bars. He unwrapped the first one and ate it while standing in front of the fridge. He left the wrapper on the counter.

A few steps down the hall from the kitchen was his and Noah’s shared bathroom. A single mirror hung over the counter and sink, reflecting the toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes and razors neatly lining the ledge of it. During the day it reflected light from the window and blinded Adam where he sat at the desk.

The shower was combined with a deep tub, nicer than what Adam had at home. He stood in front of the mirror and studied his face. The skin under his eyes was bruised with sleeplessness, a little darker than the dusty freckles covering his nose. His mouth was drawn down without his realizing, his cheeks angular and strange under the overhead light. His eyes stared back at him like they didn't belong to him. He ate his second protein bar. Then he brushed his teeth and spat quietly into the sink.

He went to his bed and sank down onto the mattress; it creaked in faint protest under his weight. Across from him, Noah’s breaths were even and quiet. Adam watched him for a minute.

The longer he looked at Noah’s sleeping form, the more he became convinced Noah was at least half conscious.

Noah never seemed to be fully doing anything; when he was sleeping, he was actually awake, and when he was awake, he was much more asleep. When he walked by Adam often imagined he was moving in cheap stop-motion, or that he wasn’t there at all, and when they sometimes ate together Noah’s pancakes got successfully torn apart but remained on his plate. Noah was full of energy, getting students riled up for parties in the library and filling the rooms of their peers with live crickets at three a.m. Noah was eerily quiet, drifting from room to room without ceremony and leaving before Adam knew he was there.

Noah pretending like this, feigning sleep so as to not intrude on Adam’s night, reminded Adam of all the nights at home when he’d climb into bed early and pretend he didn’t hear when his father came shouting. Adam let his messenger bag slide to the floor and leaned over it, rifling through papers to find the assignments that demanded his attention the most. He reached for the lamp on the desk and turned it away from Noah’s side of the room before flicking it on, just in case he was truly asleep.

Noah shifted, but he didn’t turn to face Adam. Adam went still.

“Adam,” Noah murmured sleepily, “aren’t you too tired?”

“No,” Adam said, though he was yawning as he took his jacket off. He hung it over his bedpost for easy retrieval in the morning. “I’m fine, Noah.”

+

Just as he'd gotten the tattoo on his back solely to piss off his brother, Ronan got a job at the local flower shop solely to surprise Gansey.

It had been a joke, at first. Gansey, tired of Ronan's laziness, had demanded he get a job. _I don't want you using up your trust money,_ he'd said, _and you need something to do besides school and street racing._

The next day, Ronan had pulled into the tiny driveway of their shared apartment, slid a copy of his completed job application under the door and knocked, and then left for his first shift. On the way he'd bought himself a bag of chips with two dollars Chainsaw had found for him, and somehow he ended up keeping the job. 

It was Thursday. Ronan hadn't had any classes today (at least he hadn't _attended_ them), so he'd spent his morning in the most productive way he knew how: sleeping and dreaming and filling Gansey's room with the spinning tops that kept falling out of his latest - a miniature version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that bore a title cover but had nothing but blank pages inside.

At noon Ronan threw himself into his car, and fifteen minutes later he strolled through the shop door and donned his pink apron with a smile.

"Oh, Ronan," a voice said at the counter, "how are you doing today?"

Ronan turned from spraying the new daisy and baby’s breath arrangements and plastered on his brightest smile. It amused him to no end that the old ladies who came here found him charming. "I'm great, Gladys. How about you? Did Betty like the roses?”

The old woman smiled and set her brooch on the counter, the rings on her fingers clacking against each other. Ronan wondered how she could see at all with the folds and folds of wrinkled skin crowding her eyes.

"I'm well, thank you. Betty loved the roses. She sent me to get another bouquet for her daughter, actually. She just had a baby, a tiny thing, really, all of _my_ children…."

Ronan wrapped the flowers in newspaper as the old woman rambled about her children and grandchildren and distant relatives and God. She kept talking as she counted out her money, and as Ronan recounted it for her. Ronan sent her off with a fraying smile and a ring of the cash register.

He went through the motions with more and more customers until he lost count, all of them annoyingly polite, all of them believing Ronan to be a much kinder person than he was. After wrapping Roy's fourth bouquet of the week for his wife, Ronan retreated to the back to save himself from insulting an elderly person in a flower shop; it wouldn't be worth the lecture from Gansey afterwards. 

Ronan wasn't positive that he enjoyed working here at all, he just knew he _liked_ it. The idea of it. They were meaningless, almost, the hours he spent here. No one from Ronan's real life - except Gansey, but Gansey was not considered in Ronan's mind the same way other people were - knew Ronan worked here or ever would expect him to. The elderly did make him nervous, yet the hours spent here didn't grate on his nerves like school and everything else did. Being here made him feel almost as if he were awake inside one of his dreams.

Flowers didn't last long, so the back didn't act as storage for anything except for stacks of ancient newspapers and tubs of mismatched spray bottles. In one corner was a tiny refrigerator meant for workers lunches but was more often used for the store owners’ rash cream, and against the opposite brick wall was a worn fabric couch.

Ronan threw himself onto it. His boss, passed out sideways across the cushions, startled awake.

"Ronan," he said, a little regretfully, pulling his glasses from his white hair. "What time is it?"

"It's three something," Ronan said. "I'm taking a break."

"What time did I make your breaks again? Not three. Never mind that." The old man struggled to his feet with more grunting than Ronan was comfortable with hearing and dug a set of keys out of his sweater pocket. "Will you close up tonight? I think I'll head home early."

Ronan took the keys. "Getting old?" he asked.

"I'll dock your pay if you're an asshole," the old man said. "Go sell the old folks flowers and be happy about it."

A bell rang at the counter.

The old man shot Ronan a pointed look.

"Okay," Ronan said, getting up. He slipped the keys into his pocket. "I'm going."

+

At five Ronan turned off all of the lights and locked himself out of the shop. Charlottesville was quiet at night, but it wouldn't be where he was heading. His stomach growled. He went through the first fast food joint he saw and raced out of town and towards the drag strip.

The BMW growled under him, excited after a week of docile driving through town to finally go beyond the speed limit again. Ronan pressed down on the gas, watching as the speedometer precariously trembled upwards. There were no other cars around. He was completely alone. There was nothing to stop him from tearing through every red and green and yellow light.

The drag strip was half an hour out of town at a lot that used to host car races and, now that they were outlawed, hosted illegal car races. Usually Ronan stuck to back roads and two-lane bridges, but Kavinsky preferred a domain he could make his own. Here one could organize chicken races and set fireworks off on top of the hoods of expensive cars. Here one could throw illegal pills into a screaming crowd and call it a game of catch. Here one could manifest dreams in plain sight and say it was a magic trick.

Ronan slowed the BMW as he pulled up to the strip and rolled his window down. He hooked an arm over the door and looked around, eyes skipping over the dancing drunks and drug deals and uninteresting races. Engines revved, and screams filled the air.

He heard the sick bulgarian beat of Kavinsky’s stereo before he saw its source. It was getting closer, louder, like Kavinsky had somehow heard Ronan’s heartbeat and knew what it wanted. Ronan closed his eyes for a moment. He listened to the familiar sound, felt the familiar feeling.

He opened them just as the crowd burst apart and Kavinsky’s white Mitsubishi sped through it.

Ronan's fingers clenched on the wheel and his foot twitched against the gas. The BMW gave a hungry growl in response. He watched in the rear-view mirror as Kavinsky curved towards him in a flashy slide and narrowly missed taking one of his mirrors. It fishtailed out, earning screams from the crowd, and came to a dusty stop that only allowed for a few inches of space between them. Kavinsky rolled his window down and leered at Ronan over it.

"Hey, fuck face," Kavinsky said casually. His white sunglasses reflected the streetlight. "Sorry, but I'm coming first tonight."

Ronan lazily flipped Kavinsky off, his wrists crossed over each other on the steering wheel. "You dream too much,” he said.

They weren't on the smooth, wheel-worn track, but it didn't matter. People fanned out on either side where the strip began, giving both cars barely enough room to get by and promising serious injury or death if one of the drivers were to spin out. It was dangerous. It was stupid. It made every part of Ronan seize.

One of Kavinsky’s pack started a countdown in the crowd. _One_ , they chanted, _two._

Ronan curled his fingers around the wheel. Kavinsky’s smile turned into a snarl.

 _Three_ , they screamed, and Ronan crushed the gas to the floor.

The BMW’s wheels spun in the dirt, kicking up clouds of dust before catching and smoothing out. Ronan pushed the BMW past its limits, too fast and too hard, flying through the gears with the ease of many nights spent just like this, his palms sweaty and his adrenaline choking him.

He raced down the track, matching the Mitsubishi length for length, the flimsy streetlights illuminating them both. This moment, these breathless seconds when anything could happen, were what Ronan lived for. Every possibility stretched out on the track in front of him.

But then, just like always, the Mitsubishi coughed, caught in the space between third and fourth gear where Kavinsky left it hanging. Ronan leaped into the next gear without hesitation and left Kavinsky stuttering behind him. The Mitsubishi whined as it made a desperate attempt to recover. Ronan watched it grow smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

The BMW’s malicious growl drowned out the roar of the crowd and Ronan’s own feral laughter.

This was what it was to be awake.

+

After, Ronan parked the BMW in the back of the lot and leaned against its still-hot hood. He let himself enjoy the stillness for a moment. These snatches of happiness, these brief moments when his heart sang louder than the voices in his head, were when he could truly breathe. It was like being with Gansey, except out here Ronan never had to worry about hurting him.

Ronan tilted his head back, back, until the knot of his skull was pressed to the hard exterior of the car and all he could see was stars. He stood like that, not moving, not thinking. It wasn't long before Kavinsky rolled up beside him.

Ronan wasn't interested in playing his games tonight. Gansey’s last lecture sat too heavily in his chest. He turned to get back in his car.

"Lynch," Kavinsky called. Turning back was instinctive.

Ronan looked over to where Kavinsky lounged against the hood of the Mitsubishi, shirtless and grinning. The BMW’s headlights glinted off the knife’s edge of his hipbone and the plastic surface of his glasses. He waved a joint in the air like a white flag and gestured vaguely behind him. "Wanna come play with me and my boys? I promise they won't bite. Unless I tell them to."

Ronan looked past Kavinsky to where Prokopenko, Swan, Jiang and Skov crowded in the Mitsubishi, their eyes heavy-lidded, mouths grazing off each other and the rounded openings of bottles.

Kavinsky leaned through the open window and slapped Prokopenko across the cheek. Prokopenko's head lolled against the seat. A lazy grin spread across his face. Skov laughed.

"See?" Kavinsky said. "They're completely fucking harmless."

Ronan pretended to consider it. He wanted to stay long enough to drink and do more stupid and reckless things, but Gansey would give him hell for it, and things concerning Kavinsky were never worth the pain that came with them. "Nah," he said eventually. "I've got homework."

“Really?” Kavinsky said. A muscle at his mouth twitched. “Man, what are you even doing there? People like us don't need college.”

“You always say ‘people like us,’” Ronan said. He threw himself into the BMW. “I’m not like you.”

“You're just like me,” Kavinsky insisted. “Stop playing, man.”

Ronan didn't bother with answering that or buckling in before peeling out of the lot. Gansey didn't need to know.

+

Ronan lived with Gansey in an apartment just on the edge of campus. It was far enough away from the school that Ronan could breathe and close enough that Gansey could keep tabs on him even when they had separate classes. They’d lived together off-campus during high school, and Ronan’s will-mandated education at UVA would keep them together for at least another three years, or until Glendower stole Gansey away from him.

Living with each other worked. Gansey understood Ronan’s strangeness, the impossibility of him. Ronan understood his obsessive nature and desperate search, the frailness of him. He let Gansey search for Glendower and believe in the supernatural and Gansey let him exist without question.

Ronan slammed the door behind him and made his way to his room. He toed out of his shoes and let his jeans drop to the floor. Something rustled in the corner.

Ronan scrubbed a hand over his face and crossed the room to his pet ravens’ cage. He undid the latch and sat down on his unmade bed.

Chainsaw stared at him from atop her perch, her shoulders hunched up and feathers ruffled to disappear her neck. Ronan reached a hand towards her and cursed when she immediately bit him.

“Don't be a shithead,” he said. She snapped her beak at him again, angry at being ignored all day. Ronan shrugged and pulled his sweaty tank off. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Kavinsky he had homework, but he had no intention of actually doing it.

Ronan stood and held his hand out to Chainsaw again. She gave an affectionate chirp and flapped onto his forearm. She scrabbled for balance as Ronan carried her over to Gansey’s room.

“Hey,” Ronan said, rapping on the door even though it was already open. He could see Gansey inside, silhouetted by the lamp on his bedside table, his head bent over a thick book on his lap, his wireframes low on his well-bred nose. “Still awake?”

Gansey closed the book around his thumb to keep his place and looked up at Ronan. “Always,” he said. His eyes slid to Chainsaw; even with his glasses on, his exhaustion made him squint to see her. “She was screaming for you. I tried to get her to her hang out with me but she wouldn't have it.”

“It’s the teenage angst,” Ronan explained. Chainsaw pressed herself against his bare chest. “She gets pissed and tries to eat my hand then wants to kiss and make up five seconds later. It’s just a phase.”

“Kids these days,” Gansey quipped, his voice low and unschooled. His eyes fell back to the book cover in his hands. Ronan waited for Gansey to ask him where he'd been, or to offer up some facts on Glendower that he'd just discovered and was still buzzing over, or to ask Ronan to go hunting ley lines with him tomorrow instead of lazing around.

But Gansey just stared down at his lap, his eyebrows drawn together in thought, one thumb running pensively over his lower lip.

Bored with the silence and lack of attention, Chainsaw hopped off Ronan’s arm and began to noisily sort through the mess on Gansey’s floor. She searched for a few seconds before finding a sock she seemed to particularly like. She hopped back to Ronan with it, dropped it at his feet, and went back to find something else.

The bed creaked under Gansey’s weight as he shifted to set his book on the end table. He took off his wireframes and set them down, either in faith that he would sleep soon or just in naive hope. He turned his tired gaze on Ronan. “Don’t you have an early morning class tomorrow?” he asked.

Ronan did have a morning class tomorrow. Two, in fact. Gansey knew this. But he knew - and Ronan knew as well - that it was very unlikely Ronan would attend.

Ronan leaned down to pick Chainsaw up. The raven made an indignant sound but allowed Ronan to smooth his hand over her feathers. “Yeah,” Ronan said. “I guess I’ll go and sleep.”

As he began to close the door to Gansey’s room, Gansey spoke up, “Kavinsky’s not smart like you are. You’re being careful, right?”

Ronan paused. He took a moment to try and keep the smirk on his face somewhat civil. “Always.”


	2. that one kid in class

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to those who will attempt to translate the latin: i spent a few hours reading up on latin phrases and trying to figure out how to correctly use them, but translating them back makes everything nonsense. i included my original intent at the end of the chapter if you want to read it :)

Ronan woke with a start, his blood pounding a sick beat in his ears. Something hot squeezed itself around him, cutting off his breath. He was used to this, more than used to this, but still the panic came, a wild and senseless thing. Ronan ignored it and willed himself to stay calm, unable to move in the minutes immediately upon waking.

His body came back to him in slow fits of movement: his fingers, his toes, his tongue. Finally he threw the covers off of himself and sat up in bed, his hands instinctively going to his throat only to find nothing there. He choked into the quiet of his room as his brain tried still to wake up, tried to process the shift from dream to reality.

His dream. What had it been about? He couldn't remember ever having a dream that hadn't been as clear as life upon waking, but from this last one he didn't remember much. A woman had been there, maybe. She’d had a sick, unpleasant sort of presence. Ronan remembered asking her to leave.

Chainsaw flapped in her cage. Ronan dropped his hands to his chest, where a vine weakly wrapped itself around him, harmless in the space outside of his head. Ronan drew in a breath and let it out. He untangled the vine from his chest and legs and dropped it on the floor. He watched it with some remorse as it slithered over to the window, squinting his eyes against the bright morning light.

If Gansey was lucky, Ronan’s dreaming had woken him up in time for his Friday morning classes.

Ronan let Chainsaw out of her cage and set her on the floor. He followed her to the kitchen, staying close behind as she hopped from floorboard to floorboard and giving her small nudges when she got too distracted by the books and pizza receipts that littered the apartment.

Slumped at the kitchen counter was Gansey, his wireframes hidden deep in his tousled hair and his face obscure behind a mug of coffee. Ronan picked Chainsaw up and deposited her on Gansey’s shoulder on his way by. Gansey let out a glorious sigh and said something into his arms.

“Sorry champ, what was that?” Ronan asked, yanking the fridge open. He didn't remember the last time he or Gansey had bought groceries; his only options were leftover pizza or beer. Ronan grabbed a slice of pizza for Chainsaw and slammed the fridge shut.

Gansey raised his head to watch as Ronan tossed the cold pizza slice onto the counter. Chainsaw hopped from Gansey’s shoulder to perch on the crust, her feathers ruffled. Gansey raised his eyebrows at her, then slid his gaze to Ronan. “I  _said_ , ‘Declan called’.”

Ronan turned away. “Man,” he said, “I just woke up.”

“So did I,” Gansey said, unperturbed. “You're going to class today.”

The last will and testament of Niall T. Lynch left very simple instructions. One: Ronan N. Lynch was to receive the sum of three million dollars once he reached the age of eighteen. Two: Ronan N. Lynch was to receive Niall T. Lynch’s entire interest in the real property “the Barns” at the time of the original owner’s death. And three: Ronan N. Lynch was not to trespass the physical boundaries of “the Barns”, disturb any of the contents there, living or nonliving, or take up residence there until he graduated from the University of Virginia.

Ronan was barely into the first semester of freshman year and already he wanted to quit. Four years at Aglionby had been painful enough; being at university hours away from home was almost unbearable. Ronan might have given up before even enrolling if it weren't for Gansey.

Skipping classes more often than attending them meant Ronan’s grades were suffering. He knew he needed to go to class, but doing what you needed to was a very different thing from doing what you wanted.

“I just killed a fuck-ton of demon bastards inside my head, and now I have to deal with this in reality?”

“It's Declan, not the end of the world,” Gansey said. He leveled a heavy look on Ronan. “This shouldn't be my problem, Ronan.”

Ronan leaned against the counter across from where Gansey sat. He stole Gansey’s coffee; probably Gansey had made it simply for the act of doing so and not the result anyways. Ronan took a sip, then immediately poured the coffee into the sink.

“The fuck, man?” Ronan said, “What is that?”

Gansey didn't seem particularly disturbed by Ronan’s discontent or by his coffee being poured down the drain. “It’s coffee,” he said plainly.

“Where's the sugar? The fucking cream?”

“You ate it all,” Gansey said. “Ronan.” The latter was said sternly, with purpose.  _Ronan_.

“I know,” Ronan said. “Declan, classes, whatever. I’ll fix it.”

Gansey nodded and slid his wireframes back onto his nose. He gave Chainsaw an affectionate tap before getting up and turning for his bedroom. Eyeing Ronan warily, Chainsaw dragged her slice of pizza further down the counter.

“I don't have class today so I’m going back to sleep,” Gansey said. “But I have a faerie path I want to drag you to later.”

“I thought you're supposed to avoid faerie paths,” Ronan said.

“That's for people who want to avoid faeries,” Gansey said. His bedroom door closed behind him with a soft click.

Ronan watched Chainsaw attack her pizza slice for a few minutes before going back to his room in search of his class schedule. He knew he had two classes this morning, but he wasn't positive what classes they were or which one was first. He eventually found it crumpled up in the pocket of a pair of jeans on the floor. Ronan slipped them on and checked his teeth in the mirror before telling Chainsaw to behave in his absence and stepping out the door.

+

The BMW looked confused where Ronan left it parked in front of lecture hall. Ronan followed a helpful map Gansey had drawn for him to his nine a.m. class. He sat up straight and took notes like he hadn't done since crunch week senior year, and it left him feeling much too productive and drained by the time his next class rolled around.

Ronan’s Latin teacher was significantly older than his previous and she favored him a heavy look as he took his seat in the middle row. Ronan ignored her and went over Latin phrases in his head, ready to spit out something clever if she brought up his many absences. Without Gansey here to rein him in, there wasn't much to keep Ronan in line.

Class started with a lecture and the slapping of books on desks, and almost immediately the student in front of Ronan raised his hand.

The professor called on him, and he offered a clean Latin phrase in answer. Again and again he offered answers and input, making the professor smile brighter every time.

Ronan let his attention drift from his notes to the guy in front of him. He sat up very straight, revealing a tan, freckled neck and an uneven hairline. With every answer he gave his voice became more clipped, erasing any trace of the accent Ronan thought he recognized so that he sounded more like a computer than a human. He tapped the toes of his shitty looking sneakers in time with his pen against his notebook.

The professor paced the room, picking students at random to test their Latin. She stopped in front of Ronan. She prompted, “Have you come to class today out of divine intervention?”

“ _Ex nihilo nihil fité_ ,” Ronan said easily. “ _Ego sapere aude._ ”

“ _Caesar non supra grammaticos_ ," the boy in front of Ronan said, earning another smile from the professor. Ronan sneered at the back of his neck.

“Are you a wolf among men?” she asked him.

“Well,  _corvus oculum corvi non eruit_ ,” he said, a smile in his voice now. “I only intend to help.” Some of the surrounding students laughed. Ronan’s lip curled.

The professor went on to another eager face. Ronan tuned her out, his attention a hot thing on the back of the dirt-colored kid’s neck until the bell rang.

+

“I drove by yesterday and the levels spiked like crazy, even from the road,” Gansey said, politely holding a large branch aside for Ronan. “I think the ley line running through here is more powerful than in Henrietta, though I'm not sure why.”

Ronan accepted that without comment and they walked on in silence, changing direction every few minutes when the electromagnetic frequency reader blared.

Gansey had snatched him up immediately after class and manhandled him into the Pig. He’d talked non-stop throughout the entire ride, spewing facts and theories about Glendower and ley lines so excitedly that they came out mostly incoherent. Ronan had indulged him, though; besides some boulders at the base of a mountain nearby he’d been watching obsessively, Gansey hadn't had anything to be so happy about since they'd left Henrietta.

They walked along a rockbed, water squelching underneath their shoes, pebbles skittering ahead of them. The trees rustled above them, voiceless but for the wind, so unlike the ones in Cabeswater.

Gansey followed the readings with his head down, the sunlight filtering through the trees turning his hair to glorious flames’ gold. “I read up on the area. Before the town was developed - some two hundred years or so ago - hikers and villagers avoided this entire forest because of ‘strange natural and unnatural phenomena’. Tree roots interwoven like paths, children mysteriously disappearing, voices heard in nonexistent languages at night, things like that. Even now people never come here.”

“Except us,” Ronan said.

Gansey smiled. “Except us,” he agreed.

The ground became increasingly slanted as they walked until they had to pick their way over wobbling rocks and small cliffs. The stream trickled faster now, and Ronan couldn’t feel or see much of the sun. He squinted through the increasing darkness, following the spikes on the EMF reader and the thrilled cadence of Gansey’s voice as he went on about the legends of this forest.

The ground evened out as they reached the bottom of the hill. Ronan’s eyes found the only place around them where the sun reached the ground. A thin chill crept up his spine. “You forgot about the faerie rings, Gansey,” he said.

Gansey looked up from the EMF reader and followed Ronan’s finger to a well-lit clearing across from the stream. There, bathed in sunlight and set equidistant from each other in a perfect circle, were foot-tall fungi bursting from dead grass and smooth, unnaturally rounded stones.

Gansey didn't move. He pulled the GPS from the pocket of his chinos and furrowed his brow at Ronan. “How do you know about faerie rings?”

Ronan dropped his hand and walked to the edge of the ring, his boots getting soaked in the process. Gansey more strategically stepped across large stones that emerged from the shallow creek in order to preserve his Top Sliders. “They're mentioned a lot in the Irish jigs I used to perform,” Ronan said. “Whatever. They can be thousands of years old and can stretch for miles, but they're really just a way for mushrooms to eat. Sometimes they grow around a body.”

Gansey looked delighted by this. He looked so happy that Ronan went on without prompting, “It’s  _said_  the fae dance inside the rings and that you can hear their voices in the center of it. They're supposed to tell you your future and creepy shit like that. But it's also said you can get cursed or lose an eye or some shit.”

“What else do you know about them?” Gansey asked, cautiously stepping up to the ring. He took out his journal and flipped to an ancient page already crammed with his handwriting. Ronan watched him write the GPS coordinates down. “Humor me.”

Ronan let out a heavy exhale through his nose and studied the underside of his nails. He didn't make Gansey ask again, though. “They're believed to exist in a world parallel to ours. The Irish call them ‘the good people’ or ‘the people of the hills’ because it's unlucky to call them by name. They don't like it.”

Gansey walked around the circle, his thumb pressed to his lower lip. It took Ronan a minute of watching him to realize the EMF reader had gone dead. Very slowly, Gansey held it out in one hand past the line of fungi and stones.

Every reading blared red. Every hair on Ronan’s body stood on end.

Gansey snatched his arm back. “They're…” he said, and made another circle around the ring. “They're immortal, right? The... good people?”

“Why?” Ronan sneered, but the look on Gansey’s face made his chest go cold. “Did they talk to you?”

“No,” said Gansey, a little breathily. “But I did hear something.”

He stepped back from the circle and went to Ronan’s side. Ronan took the EMF reader from Gansey so he wouldn't be tempted to test it in the ring again. Gansey thumbed to another page in his journal and and began writing in it, jotting down notes and self-directed questions between sketches of trees and ravens and fast cars.

“Don't go near that again,” Ronan warned. He looked around them. The forest stretched ahead of them, up and up into the mountains into unexplored wilderness. Ronan suddenly remembered Irish folklore that told of people disappearing into the hills with the faeries and coming back insane days and months and years later, or not at all. He remembered the stories of wonder-turned-fear. All of this information he'd loved as a child, rising up. Every impossible, dangerous thing.

“Hey, I’ve got to get to work,” Ronan said.

“What?” Gansey looked up from his journal, pen pressed to the page on an aborted letter. “Right now?”

Someone else might have hesitated in turning back to the mundane in the face of magic like this, but to Ronan the magic here was almost the same as what was in his head, except that it didn't react to his thoughts, and it didn't feel as close. In this alien forest, he couldn't create something to keep Gansey safe if things went wrong.

“Right now,” Ronan said. He slapped a bug off his neck and turned away from the mountains. “Daily grind and all that.”

“Alright,” Gansey said, a little regretfully, snapping his journal shut.

“We’ll come back,” Ronan said, stepping across the stream and heading back the way they had come. “The ring will still be here. Go home, research it, make it your bitch. We’ll bring a picnic and everything next time. Faeries can't fuck with us.”

“Ronan,” Gansey said. His tone was the same as when he said _please_  or  _come on._

Ronan began trudging up the hill. He heard Gansey sigh behind him.

“ _Excelsior_ ,” Gansey said.

+

The parlor closed in a very different manner to how it opened. During his day shifts, Adam cleaned the counter and went over appointments and generally lazed around when he ran out of things to do. Any clients that showed up for their scheduled sessions were never there for him.

Timeframes were checked off in successful order, needles buzzed productively, and nothing that hadn't been painstakingly planned occurred.

At night, the parlor ran on impulse energy. Groups of friends pushed through the door as one writhing mass and laughed their desires Adam’s way. Stumbling couples just toeing the allowed line of sobriety held out their limbs for tattooed declarations of love. Clients that enjoyed the late lull sat for hours at a time to get colored on.

It was the most tiring part of Adam’s job, but it paid the best. Because his apprenticeship let him do simple, last-minute jobs, and because people often preferred to pay for their pleasures under the cover of night.

Adam checked his watch. He didn't have any regular clients coming tonight, but he'd still hoped someone might show up and give him enough money to keep things comfortable for the week. Surprisingly and much to his disappointment, not one person had stumbled in yet. The minutes ticked by in near silence only broken by the clicking of Adam’s pen and the whir of needles in the next room. He'd have to leave in the next half hour if he wanted to make it to the flower shop on time.

Adam let himself zone out, mindlessly clicking his pen and running over his calculus homework in his head. He was decent enough in the subject, but it took him hours of studying to get the grades he needed. Latin was easier, coming almost second nature to Adam after the year he spent learning it at Aglionby and the rest of high school he'd spent learning it by himself. Physics was manageable.

He’d need to finish all of his homework tonight if he wanted to spend the weekend working and catching up on sleep.

Adam startled to as a stranger appeared from nowhere and leaned against the counter.

“What can I do for you?” Adam asked, straightening in his chair.

The man leaned farther over the counter. The too-strong smell of his cologne poured over with him. “You're Adam, right?”

 _Oh_ , Adam thought.  _Wake up._  He let his spine go liquid again and he leaned over the counter, too. He forced his lips into a hazy, loose smile. “That's me.”

“My buddy was tellin’ me you're real good at your job,” he looked Adam up and down. “I wanted to come see for myself.”

Adam looked to the lobby to make sure it was empty before sliding off his chair. He beconecked the man after him with a curled finger. “Come to the back with me,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

+

Adam ran a hand through his hair as he dropped to his knees. When he was at home, his mother always cut it, though she either didn't care to try or was never able to make it look good. Now Adam cut it himself. It was fine with him - it was a waste to spend money on a haircut and he'd never cared much what his hair looked like anyways. Most of the students and staff at his low grade public schools hadn’t had the social height to judge him for it.

Adam didn't mind it, and his peers now couldn't seem to care less. “Boho shabby chic,” Noah had commented with admiration more than once. The man Adam was blowing now didn't seem to care either as long as he had something to hold on to.

Adam closed his eyes to think and swirled his tongue, adding up the expenses due this week and finding his pocket change lacking. He was a little disappointed that this guy had only asked for a blowjob; the twenty-five dollars Adam charged for one wouldn't be enough.

He’d turned down a man that had come in the other week, a new client that thought offering up enough money would make Adam forget his rules. Instead of complying Adam had added a few hours to his work schedule to make ends meet. Even though the concept of virginity and the sentiment of a perfect first time was lost on Adam, he wasn't going to let someone pay him for sex when he'd never had it before.

Adam was being smart about this. He evaluated himself every night, needing to make sure he never strayed from his plan or forgot his pride. He would not get in over his head. There were lines he would not cross.

Adam did other, more expensive jobs for the clients he knew to be trustworthy. It was incredibly easy to do almost anything when you pretended to be a professional. Once he'd been paid four hundred dollars to go to a fancy party with an older woman and do nothing but hang off her arm and smile the whole time. It had been one of the more unsettling jobs he’s done, but afterwards he’d dropped his extra shifts for a full week and gotten some much-needed rest.

The man hissed something and pulled on Adam’s hair. Adam opened his eyes to look up at him.

“Watch your teeth,” he said.

Adam let out a fake moan in answer and the man pulled him closer, almost choking him. Along with the money Adam needed for the textbook he needed to be able to pay his monthly tuition. He reached up with some annoyance and began to jerk the guy off in time with his mouth. This was taking way too long. The cafeteria would be closed by the time he got home and he wanted to be able to make a sandwich without having to worry about waking Noah.

The man thrust into Adam’s mouth and came without warning. Adam pulled off and got to his feet, catching his breath and letting the man get rid of the condom himself.

He waited, leaning against the wall for a minute. Sometimes they wanted to talk afterwards. Sometimes they just left. Finally Adam turned to go and the man grabbed him by the wrist.

“Hey,” Adam started. He hated the flare of panic that shivered up his spine. He tried to steady his voice, to make it something that forced yielding and submission. He couldn't remember if he'd ever succeeded in doing so. “Don't-”

“I wanna give you this,” the man said, leaning forward to press against Adam as he slid something into his pocket. “So you remember me.”

Adam backed out of his space. “Thank you,” didn't seem like the appropriate response, but he tried it anyway.

The guy nodded and turned for the street. Adam waited until he was out of sight to dig out the contents of his pocket: a crumpled up twenty.

A pang of annoyance tugged at Adam’s pride, but he shoved it down in his pocket with the bill for later retrieval. He went back to the counter and gathered his things. He wanted to get to the flower shop before dark.

+

The flower shop was a tiny glass-faced store nestled in the heart of town just outside campus. Adam had googled it the other week at the library, partly because he needed a meaningless search to distract him from his calculus but mostly because he needed the professor to like him. His mother had taught him from a young age how far a small gesture could go.

Adam needed all the help he could get.

A brass bell over the door announced his entering and Adam gave an automatic smile to the elderly customers that paused in their purchases and conversations to look at him. He looked past them to where a surly looking teenager manned the counter. He noticed Adam and favored him a mean look.

Adam ignored him and drifted along the line of display cases. Flower arrangements of all different sizes and colors were hard-packed into rickety looking wooden crates. Adam stared the price tags down until he found the cheapest crate and he picked the friendliest looking arrangement in it.

He weaved through the elderly to the counter, the bouquet dripping in his hand. The counter boy watched him approach, newspaper already spread out in front of him and hand poised over the cash register.

“Hi,” Adam said, setting the flowers down between them.

The clerk didn't say anything as he took the flowers and began wrapping them in the newspaper, his hands moving with the mindless ease of long practice. He arched a brow and glanced up at Adam, his eyes heavy-lidded. “These for your girlfriend?" he asked, not looking at all interested in Adam's answer. Something about his voice sounded familiar.

"Yes," Adam said, because he wasn't about to tell this punk in an embroidered pink apron that he was trying to get on his professor’s good side. He took the sum of the flowers in his head from the money he could afford to spend this week, checking and checking again from habit rather than intention.

The guy accepted that without comment and typed something one-handed. Adam watched him turn to grab the stores’ signature card and glimpsed the black hooks of a tattoo sneaking out from under the neck and arms of his tank. Adam eyed it; a tattoo like that wasn't cheap, and this kid couldn't be making much more than minimum wage at a flower shop.

Adam looked back to the flowers, feeling less sure that this was the best way to get on his professor’s good side. He hadn't done anything like this since elementary school, and even then it had been wildflowers he'd picked at recess, still full of roots and dirt. Adam’s teacher had accepted the gift either out of kindness or only because Adam was so little, but now Adam was a somewhat grown man and the professor was at least fifteen years his senior.

She'd mentioned liking flowers, but the more he thought about what he was doing the more he doubted it. The last thing he wanted was to be unintentionally patronizing or sexist. Desperately, he thought back to a male professor of his that kept a plant on his desk.

Finished wrapping the flowers, the guy slid them towards Adam over the counter, newspaper crinkling. He tilted his shaved head towards Adam in customary politeness. "Total’s seventeen-fifty.”

It wasn't cheap, but Adam hadn't come here expecting cheap. He could almost afford to spend all he'd earned today. Thinking back to the potted plant on his male professor's desk, he said, "Sorry, but could I add one more bouquet?"   
  
The guy raised an eyebrow but didn't seem to even consider replying.

Adam looked behind himself. A line was starting to form. "Do you have any recommendations?"   
  
He shouldn't have said that. The guy was looking at him like he'd asked him to eat the cash register; one eyebrow quirked, mouth pulled back unevenly. “Those are the most popular,” he said eventually, pointing at a display case standing against the far wall. A ridiculously expensive looking watch dangled on his wrist.

Adam bristled at his tone as he walked to the display case. Maybe, Adam thought, he sounded familiar because all rich assholes sounded the same. The cheapest arrangement was five dollars more than the other bouquet, but Adam could kick himself about it later.

He handed the flowers to the clerk and dug out his cash while he wrapped it in newspaper. The guy took Adam's money and gave him his change a few seconds later: two dollars and a couple of pennies.

Adam shoved the change deep in his pocket and grabbed the bouquets. Already the bottoms of the newspapers were damp. “Thanks,” he said.

“ _Ne loqui de re operis pretium est!_ ” The clerk replied with a sneer. The Latin made Adam pause, but already an old man was shoving past him to the counter. Adam dropped it and let himself be shuffled to the door. He could swear he felt the clerks gaze burning into his back.

+

Adam's dorm was empty when he finally got home. He’d biked slower than usual, taking care not to drop the flowers.

He put the flowers in the fridge he and Noah shared, grabbed a sandwich he didn't remember making, and dropped his bag onto their desk. He studied for a few hours before glancing at the clock and becoming worried.

It wasn't unusual for Noah to disappear - he was always going to Frisbee games and peaceful protests and fraternity prank fests and all kinds of other things that elicited concern. He was the kind of person to be nowhere and everywhere at once.

But it  _was_  unusual for him to not leave a note.

Adam finished his homework and checked the clock again. It read  _3:17am_. He didn't have classes on weekends, but getting up for work tomorrow would be hell. He left the desk lamp on for Noah and climbed into his small, twin-sized bed.

When Adam closed his eyes, sleep was there waiting for him with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ex nihilo nihil fit means "nothing comes from nothing," and is used as a reminder that hard work is always required in order to achieve something. and then Ego sapere aude means "I dare to be wise."
> 
> but Ronan says it incorrectly, so Adam says, Caesar non supra grammaticos, which means "the Emperor is not above the grammarians."
> 
> corvus oculum corvi non eruit means "a crow will not pull out the eye of another crow." It’s essentially the same as "honor amongst thieves," and refers to complete solidarity amongst a group of likeminded people regardless of the consequences or condemnation. 
> 
>  
> 
> ronan's latin to adam in the shop means basically “you're welcome” or “it was no trouble” but with some heavy sarcasm and contempt laid over it


	3. can we call this a coincidence?

Adam woke sometime after twelve on Sunday. He couldn't remember sleeping in so late since during the summertime back at home, and even then it had been interrupted by raised voices and slamming doors.

He sat up, causing a textbook and some papers to slide to the floor. Wearily, he bent down to pick them up, his movements and thoughts hazy and uncoordinated with sleep. He looked over the assignments in his hands. Had he finished them last night? Yes…

“Adam!” Noah said, suddenly an inch from Adam’s face, leaning over the bed. “Good morning, roomie! Friend! Parrish!”

“Hey,” Adam said, voice slow. He leaned back, trying to focus on his roommate. “Noah.”

Noah grinned and backed away until his legs hit his bed and he plopped down onto it. He laid sideways and rubbed his flyaway, colorless hair into his pillow, his eyes closed like a little kid’s. 

Adam shivered as the sheets slid from him and he pulled his blanket around himself. "I asked the residential director about the drafts in here the other day, but she said we're probably just sensitive to it or something, since all the dorms share the same heating system."   
  
"Sorry," said Noah meekly, his hands fitful over his arms.

  
"It's not your fault," Adam said dismissively, but he felt all at once uneasy. He hated it when people apologized to him for things they weren't at fault for. It made him feel like he was higher than them, and threatening.    
  
Which was to say, it made him feel like his father. 

“My pillows at home were softer,” Noah said suddenly. “My blankets, too. And I had a dog I slept with. She was so warm. Like a heater!” Noah pressed his entire face into his pillow so that his voice became muffled. “You were up so late last night. I actually tried counting sheep. Not ‘cause I was trying to fall asleep but because my eyes were closed and I don't have eye-clocks, so, you know.”

“I was just trying to finish an essay and-” Adam had to check the papers in his hands again to remember what they were on “-some history.”

“Cool! Smart student!” Noah exclaimed. “Do you want to go to the park? Or something! I have no plans at all. I wanted to skate, but…” Noah trailed off as he often did. He was quiet for a moment, then began to hum something that sounded like ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’.

Adam pressed his elbows into his thighs and his palms into his eyes, taking a moment to just think. He’d spent half of yesterday working and the other half studying. The endless hours had paid off. He could afford to let himself relax a little today. 

He dropped his hands to look at Noah, who was now tugging on tennis shoes. This Noah was a wholly different person to the Noah that had slouched in last night, disappeared into the bathroom for thirty minutes, and then climbed into bed without a word. 

For a while now Adam had wondered if Noah was bipolar. Now he began to consider whether Noah was medicated or not, and if he needed to be. There had to be something to regulate him besides marijuana and street racing and meditation circles. 

Noah finished with his shoes and looked up at Adam. “Have you eaten yet? No, you haven't, you just woke up. Wanna go grab something?”

Eating with Noah was one of Adam’s least favorite things, because it was always either Adam eating by himself while Noah rattled on about everything in the world or while he sat there silently and stared into space. Adam didn't mind the company, but the fact that Noah never ate around him bothered him a little. He was always trying to take care of Adam but Adam never seemed able to take care of him.

They ended up walking to the Green - a protein bar in Adam’s hand and a thick blanket in Noah’s - where students lazed and threw frisbees for dogs and participated in group yoga. 

Noah spread the blanket under a tree while Adam munched on his protein bar. He grabbed Adam’s bag from him to weigh down one corner, then took off his own shoes to weigh down two more. He sat on the last corner with a satisfied  _ oof  _ and threw his hands up in the air. “There!” he said. “Oh, we should get a dog.”

Adam followed Noah’s gaze to where two girls lay in the grass together, matching sunglasses covering their faces and a fat, panting mutt spread across their stomachs. 

It was an impractical idea, but still Adam smiled as he sat down next to Noah. “What kind?” he asked. He toed his shoes off and stuffed the wrapper from the protein bar into his pocket. 

Noah thought for a moment, then he pointed to a dog across the lawn that was rolling in the grass and seemed to be in a state of ecstasy. “One like that. I’d name her Godzilla.”

The dog did not seem to Adam anything special or fear-inspiring, but he nodded and laid back on the blanket. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back to let the shadows of leaves run over his face, to let the wind breathe across his shirt. He became so distracted by the calming feeling of the air around him that he didn't realize Noah had stopped talking. He looked over to see that he had laid down beside him and was staring up at the tree looming over them. 

“It's nice, isn't it?” Noah said. “Taking time to chill out.”

Adam nodded. He'd worked enough yesterday that he didn't have to worry about making money today, but he did want a safety net of some extra credits. Noah never seemed to worry about school, but Adam could never stop. “I’m working in a few hours,” he told Noah. “At my TA job.”

“You can go to sleep. I’ll wake you up.” Noah promised him.

Adam closed his eyes again. 

 

+

 

Ronan raced and drank all of Saturday – this was momentarily interrupted by Declan’s Volvo pulling into his and Gansey’s driveway unannounced – and spent Sunday with his brothers: the morning at St. Agnes church with Declan and Matthew and the afternoon and night with Gansey exploring and playing Mario Kart. 

He drove himself to campus on Monday morning by sheer force of will. He didn’t want to go to class, but staring out the window while some poor professor droned on for an hour or two was better than dealing with Declan’s surprise visits.  _ I’m in class, _ Ronan took the time to text him,  _ so don’t fucking come over. _

Ronan shut his phone off as soon as the text sent and shoved it deep in his bag. Declan hadn't always been the controlling, tense and tie-choked man he was today, but since Niall Lynch’s death he'd taken it upon himself to carry the entire family, even though a certain passenger had been unwilling. Ronan hated him for it. Their mother dying two years ago only made him hate Declan more.  

Campus was sprawling and alive, all green hills and old brick buildings, the scholar’s version of Niall Lynch’s Barns. It reminded Ronan not fondly of Aglionby, except now the real world felt much closer than it had then and Gansey wasn't at his side as often. Here he wasn't Ronan Lynch, dreamer, and he wasn't Ronan Lynch, best friend of  _ whoop whoop Gansey boy!  _ He was Ronan Lynch, student. One angry, hateful student among thousands. 

Ronan crossed a section of too-green grass. At Aglionby, his bag had banged against his hip, full of books he despised. His tie had choked him until Gansey looked away long enough for him to loosen it.

Here, he wore jeans and a tank and carried the bare minimum in his arms or pockets. And Gansey didn't have classes on Monday’s, so he was completely and horribly alone. 

Ronan pushed his way through the double doors of a weather-worn brick building and immediately turned right to take a staircase up. He skipped the last two steps to the first landing and threw his weight against the heavy metal door. It closed behind him with a satisfying bang.

The hall was beginning to empty as students ended conversations and got to their respective classrooms, but there were enough still in the hall that Ronan bumped into them a good deal. 

He followed Gansey’s map with more attention than he need have. He shoved it into his pocket for safekeeping when he reached the right room. As he passed the professor's desk he saw a vase of familiar flowers, with the store card still nestled in the middle of them. 

Ronan looked from the desk to the rows of students and found the dirt-colored kid in the front row, just like in Latin. Sitting there in his faded t-shirt and scuffed sneakers and with his pen at the ready over a sheet of clean, pristine-looking paper. Again.

Ronan dropped his bag under the desk next to him and threw himself into it. The dirt-colored kid didn't look over at this disturbance. 

Ronan leaned far back in his chair. He tilted his head back and towards him, unsure why he wanted so badly to bother him but just knowing he did. His face was interesting, but Ronan had already seen a lot of interesting things. His features were delicate, and Ronan was not skilled with delicate things.

Students still poured into the room in a steady, unending stream. Ronan caught glimpses of perfectly knotted ties, watches as expensive as his own but ten years newer, smiles schooled amiably.  _ Why,  _ he asked his father,  _ did you make me come here? Here, of all places? _

Ronan looked back to the dirt-colored kid. He was different than all of the other students, and although he hid it well it betrayed him in the smallest of details: the fray on the shoulder of his jacket that could only come from years of use, the cheap plastic watch on his thin-boned wrist, the lack of rigid, princely posture in his spine. 

Ronan thought back to the way his mouth had tightened at the shop, when Ronan had finished calculating his total. The careful way he clipped his accent when offering an answer. The concerned furrow of his pale, thin brows. This was a person that stood separate from others with just a few mannerisms, someone who had a history with some weight to it. 

Someone, Ronan thought, that Gansey would like.

"So, you're dating the professor?” Ronan asked him.

It took him a moment to realize Ronan was speaking to him **,** and when he turned to face Ronan he looked slightly affronted. 

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

Ronan didn't say anything in reply because a scholarly looking girl had come up and she slapped papers on the guy’s desk. 

“Adam,” she said, pointing at the papers with much more enthusiasm than Ronan had expected to see in a lecture hall. “Look at this! I haven't gotten a grade this good all semester. You're a genius.”

He -  _ Adam _ \- smiled up at her. “I’m glad I could help.” That accent was definitely from Henrietta. 

Ronan waited until the girl was gone to ask, “What's a genius doing kissing up to a teacher?” Usually he wouldn't care. Usually he'd say nothing and be done with this. Usually.

“It's none of your business.”

This was where Gansey would apologize, and rephrase the question in a kinder way. But Ronan was not Gansey.

He turned away without a word and took his notebook out, but he didn't write down a single word the entire lecture. 

 

+

 

That Thursday night Ronan received a text from Kavinsky:  _ racing with some highschool kids. wanna come? Not on my seats though _

Ronan felt an unclean kind of pleasure run through him. So soon after losing to him Kavinsky wanted another go. He’d been the same in high school, and he was the same now, except he'd moved mansions and graduated to harder drugs instead of a harder curriculum. 

Ronan locked Chainsaw in her cage and toed his shoes on. Kavinsky would never learn. 

He was quiet when he closed his bedroom door behind him, but it was in vain; Gansey was sitting cross-legged and awake in the middle of the living room floor, his flannel pajama pants bunched up around his bare ankles and his hands preoccupied with rebuilding his miniature Henrietta. 

Gansey looked up. He was working on a flimsy and unimportant looking office building and looked more tired than usual. The bags under his eyes seemed like they were getting very comfortable.

Ronan paused just outside his door. Gansey frowned. It was killing him as much as it was killing Ronan to be away from home. 

Gansey said, “Don’t race tonight.”

It was more than enough to make Ronan stop. 

Gansey knew what it meant when Ronan disappeared at night and came back smelling of adrenaline and burnt rubber, but he usually pretended he didn't. He'd figured out sometime in their junior year of high school that it was something Ronan needed. 

Him so blatantly asking Ronan to abstain was enough to make Ronan tuck his phone back into his pocket. He carefully picked his way through the miniature town until he reached Gansey at the heart of it. 

He kicked at Gansey’s foot. “You wanna do something then? You've been rebuilding your beloved girlfriend for hours.”

Gansey blinked up at him, his brown eyes quizzical behind wireframes. “I haven't, really.”

“Let’s go to a bar,” Ronan said.

“We’re both underage. And I don’t think you should use your dreamt fake ID’s, even if they are perfect.”

“Let’s go to the park, then,” Ronan countered.

“Really.” Gansey was smiling; Ronan was not the type to stargaze amongst old people and teenage couples as an orchestrated pastime, and Gansey knew that better than anyone else. Ronan scrubbed a hand over the back of his shaved head. “Then do you want to go with me to the tattoo place? On Cervantes? It’s open late.” 

Gansey frowned as he fixed a cardboard door and then fixed it again. “Are you getting more work done on your back?” he asked.

Ronan kicked Gansey a second time, too awake to stay still. “Fuck no,” he said. “I was just thinking about getting a flower on my thumb. Or something.” 

Ganseys voice was dry. “You’ve really found your calling catering to old ladies, haven't you.” 

Ronan shrugged. “Whatever. It pays the bills. You coming?”

Gansey was quiet for a moment. Then he took off his wireframes and set them down in the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing. “Just let me get dressed.”

 

+

 

After spending a few hours at his teacher's assistant job Adam ended up going to the parlor anyways. 

The night shift was nothing to complain about, and since he'd finished his homework and studying earlier he had no reason to go back to the dorm except to shower and sleep.

He ended up doing a few small ink jobs and cleaning up behind the counter. His boss was nowhere to be found, as were most of the other artists. Adam was just rearranging the basket of pens for the hundredth time when two familiar looking teenagers walked in. 

The first was familiar because he looked just like every other rich student in Adam’s classrooms: a clean haircut, pressed khakis, a brand-name shirt gripping his shoulders and chest in all of the right places. A bright smile that knew it had your vote. He stepped in first and looked around the parlor, one hand beckoning the second boy in after him like he was conducting traffic. 

The second was familiar because he was the angry voice from Latin. The surly flower shop clerk. The self-assured sneer from Physics.

Adam watched the shaved-headed boy look around the parlor, and then slowly at Adam himself. He set all of the pens down and crossed his arms over the counter, and he waited.

He kept his gaze on the shaved-headed boy but the presidential one reached him first. He set his hands flat on the counter and instead of looking at Adam he leaned back, back, back, looking up at all of the sketched designs of tattoos and photos of satisfied customers. When he finally brought his eyes back to Adam they were bright with excitement. 

The second teenager elbowed his way in before the President could make a speech. “Coincidence,” he said, more to the President than to Adam. “The professor’s boyfriend works here.” 

He was wearing a plain black tank now, and Adam could easily see parts of his tattoo peeking out above his collar and under his arms. On his nape was a flower, or perhaps it was a thorn. Curling around his shoulder was a deadly looking frenzy of claws and teeth and horns. 

“You two know each other?” The President asked. Adam hadn't been watching him, so he didn't know when his face had switched from joyful to polite. The two emotions presented almost the same, so the switch wasn't obvious. But Adam had grown up being careful about what parts of himself he gave to the public, so he knew what a face looked like when it was hiding something.

**“** We’re in some classes together,” the other boy said, at the same time that Adam said, “He sold me flowers.”

“Oh!” The President smiled sideways at his friend before looking back at Adam. “So you're the one who put him in such a sour mood after Latin.”

“Yes,” Adam said, unable to help but smile. It was like a trigger reaction. Like he'd breathed it in. “That would be me.”

“Ronan’s used to being uncontested in Latin, but he's been slacking off lately and has consequently fallen behind, so you'll have to forgive him for any aggressiveness or ill intent.” The President extended a hand over the counter. With it came the sharp scent of mint. “I’m Gansey.”

So the both of them had names now. Adam shook Gansey’s hand, once, firmly. “Adam.” 

He dropped Gansey’s hand and retreated to the other side of the counter. He tapped the keyboard to get the computer to wake up and then looked at the two boys. 

“I’m guessing it's Ronan getting inked tonight,” Adam said, not really a question. 

“He really is a genius,” Ronan said nastily. 

Before Adam could become annoyed, Gansey interjected, “Yes, it’s Ronan. Not me. I’m just here to watch and to make sure he doesn't get anything distasteful.”

_ Distasteful,  _ Adam thought, looking at all of Ronan’s barbed wires and Gansey’s smooth demeanor. He wondered how Gansey so easily avoided being cut. 

Adam began to set up their walk-in session on the computer. He offered Ronan the waiver of consent and Ronan signed the appropriate lines without reading any of it. “What do you want?” he asked Ronan. “There's enough artists free that you can get started now.”

Ronan shrugged. He held up his hand. Adam glimpsed raised silver scars disappear beneath leather bracelets as they slid down his wrist. “I was thinking of getting a flower, a small one on my thumb or something.”

“Oh,” Adam said, surprised. It wasn't that it was an unusual request, but because of his back tattoo and abrasive attitude he'd expected Ronan to want a sleeve or skulls at the least. 

He tore off the corner of a receipt from the stack next to the keyboard and drew a quick flower. Usually it irritated him when customers came in unsure of what they wanted, but he wasn't as tired as he thought he'd be by now and he didn't have anything else to do anyways. 

Adam held the sketch out to Ronan. “Something like that?” he asked. 

Ronan shrugged again. “Yeah, that's good.”

Adam eyed his scribble again. “If you want a tattoo that simple, I can do it. If you're okay with that.”

“Oh, are you an artist here?” Gansey asked.

Adam finished setting the appointment up and tucked the receipt into his pocket. “I get paid for working the counter but I’m also an apprentice,” he said. “I do smaller jobs when they come up.”

Gansey nodded cordially, then turned a questioning gaze on Ronan. Ronan nodded back like he didn’t care all that much about a permanent addition to his skin. “You’re good enough for me.” he said. 

Adam got up and led Ronan and Gansey to an empty chair in the back. He wanted to bristle at Ronan’s uncaring and dismissive attitude, but the way Gansey balanced out his hostility made him seem like the kind of person Adam wouldn’t mind knowing. Though, Adam supposed, it might make more sense to just befriend Gansey, since he seemed to be the more morally balanced of the two. There was something intimidating about Gansey’s easy smile, though; he seemed polished and faraway whereas Ronan was just another student, albeit a rude one. 

Ronan got settled and Gansey asked Adam polite questions about work and school while Adam got his tools organized. Soon enough he had Adam confessing that he had a partial scholarship and worked two jobs to pay his end of it. Gansey seemed to like this, and telling him more didn't make Adam feel like he was losing something. 

He told Gansey about the study groups, the extra hours, every grabbed opportunity. He told him about Noah. He told him why he'd bought the flowers. He told him about many things that made him Adam Parrish but nothing about how those things had come to be. 

Adam left out the details on what had been his home, the reasons  _ why  _ he needed to work so hard to keep what he had. He left out too much for it to be considered a full truth but Gansey didn't push him for more.

When Gansey ran out of questions, Adam returned them. He learned that Gansey nor Ronan knew what they wanted to major as. He learned that Gansey owned a 73’ Camaro he called ‘Pig’ and loved fiercely. He learned that both Gansey and Ronan had gone to Aglionby, though he didn't share that he'd attended as well but for only freshman year. Gansey was overjoyed when he learned that Adam was from Henrietta, and politely interrupted Adam to ask him:

“What do you know about Welsh Kings?”

It was not the kind of question Adam would have expected from a boy like Gansey. His one year at Aglionby had taught him more in history than his three years at Mountain View High, but he remembered nothing about Welsh Kings from his classes.

He thought back to the rare few times he’d had enough free time to visit the local library, to the random books he'd perused for no purpose other than pleasure. There had been one book,  _ The Kings and Queens of Wales,  _ that Adam had read over the span of a few afternoons.

There was one king that had struck something in Adam, an enigmatic ruler whose life was surrounded by deceit and betrayal and obscurity. Maybe Adam remembered his story because the king had been unknowable and a runaway like Adam himself, because he seemed more human than most other historical figures. Maybe Adam only remembered him because he'd happened to get enough sleep the night before reading that particular chapter.

He grabbed onto this king. The earnest look on Gansey’s face had Adam not wanting to disappoint. 

“Vortigern?” Adam said carefully. “All information about him is up to debate, but he was supposedly a Welsh warlord in the fifth century.”

Gansey, Adam thought, could not have looked more delighted, but Ronan snorted and said, “Try ten centuries later.”

Adam searched his mind for information on any fifteenth century Welsh Kings but came up blank. He shook his head, more at Ronan than Gansey, not that Ronan was paying him any attention. 

“So there was this one noble,” Gansey began, “a medieval Welsh noble named Owen Glendower. He was the leader of the Welsh Revolt that fought the English for Welsh freedom. For years he was successful-”

Now Adam remembered. “Until he was captured and killed by the English.”

Gansey's smile could have blown Henrietta’s fuses **.** “That's one story, but I believe in another. I believe that he was never captured. I believe he only disappeared.”

“Disappeared to where?” Adam asked. He knew he was getting too distracted from his job but he couldn't help it - rather, he didn't want to; he so rarely let himself engage in meaningless conversation like this that he'd forgotten what it was like. He slowly organized his tools as he listened to Gansey, unable to feel disinterest when Gansey told him about Glendower’s unreal victories, the rumors of his impossible powers, and how he had disappeared into the northern mountains and escaped history with his men as if it all had happened just yesterday. 

Adam would have thought Glendower disappearing was the end of Gansey’s interest, but Gansey continued. 

“Have you heard of the legends of sleeping kings?”

Adam was beginning to feel somewhat left out of the educational loop, but Ronan said, “No one fucking has, Gansey.”

Gansey had the good grace to look embarrassed, but he went on, “There are legends that heroes like Arthur and Glendower aren't really dead, and are only sleeping in tombs underground, waiting to be woken up.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. He saw Ronan smirk in his peripheral vision. 

“I believe Glendower’s body was brought to the New World,” Gansey went on. “Specifically here, in Virginia. I've spent the past six years researching him. I want to find him.”

“Gansey,” Ronan interrupted, “you're keeping him from making a living.”

Again Gansey looked embarrassed. Adam was quiet as he finished up getting his things together. When he was ready he showed Ronan the receipt again and asked where he wanted the tattoo. 

“On my thumb,” Ronan said unhelpfully. 

“Put your hand up here,” Adam said, tapping the arm of the chair. He repositioned Ronan’s hand until he had the perfect angle. He spread Ronan’s fingers, then tapped along Ronan’s thumb; the small space just beneath the knuckle, the lower inside corner where it connected to his palm. 

“There,” Ronan said when Adam touched the end of his thumb, where the biggest part of the bone jutted out beneath the skin. 

Adam accepted that without comment and pulled his gloves on. He disinfected the target area, then carefully sketched the flower there with a light stencil. He could feel Gansey’s keen attention when he glanced up at Ronan and asked, “Is this exactly how you want it?”

Ronan smirked as if Adam had told a joke. “There exactly.”

Adam nodded and got his needles and ink ready. The flower was simple line art, all thin, clean black lines and no color. It wouldn't take more than ten minutes to finish, and that was if he decided to be lazy.

Adam started to trace the design, the only sound between him and the other two boys the whirring of the needles and the occasional approving sound from Gansey. He checked and rechecked it as he traced the second petal, admiring how the simplicity of it was so delicate and drastically different to the ragged bracelets on Ronan’s wrist and the ink on his back and the fire in his eyes. 

Gansey went quiet as the pen whirred louder, and Ronan looked away. Adam bent over his hand and held it steady with his own. He enjoyed the clean process of driving ink into skin, loved how this skill of keeping his hand steady let him live just a little easier. He was almost done. He just needed to pause here, spread Ronan’s fingers more, and finish tracing the curve of this last petal.

When Adam was finished, he let go of Ronan’s hand and set his tools aside. Ronan sat up to examine his hand, expressionless except for an arched brow. Gansey said nothing, but he seemed much more interested than Ronan from his vantage point over Ronan’s shoulder. 

Ronan began to get up, his eyes still on his new tattoo. 

“Wait a second,” Adam said. “I have to cover that.”

Ronan obediently sat back and Gansey watched attentively as Adam wrapped his hand. Once he had it taped in place he stood and preceded the other boys to the counter. 

Adam tapped the keyboard to wake the monitor up and set it up to close Ronan’s appointment. Ronan handed Adam his credit card without even asking the price. 

Adam rung him up and handed him back his card.  _ One day,  _ he told himself.  _ One day.  _

“It was nice meeting you, Adam,” Gansey said, in the tone Adam would use on teachers or employers. This was Gansey finishing their interaction, like a businessman shaking your hand at the end of a meeting. From that polite tone, Adam knew he was nothing more to Gansey than his profession and the services he could offer. 

“Likewise,” Adam replied. 

Ronan had already taken the bandage off. He crumpled it in his hand and tossed it onto the counter. “See you in class,” he said.

As the door closed behind them, Adam heard Gansey say, “You’re actually going?"   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friends, sorry for the late update.
> 
> i’m still working on this fic every day, but for the rest of the summer i have a completely full schedule with training and the gym and night class. then i’ll be really busy in the first few weeks of school at least.
> 
> i’ll still be writing in my free time, but updates might not be consistent. i’ll probably start posting on sunday’s because that’s when i have the most free time.
> 
> thank you for reading. i appreciate you guys a lot :)


	4. making friends

Ronan didn’t show up to physics class Friday morning. Probably he was too wealthy to think of school as more than a pastime. A little annoyed, Adam flicked his pen in irritation – an unjustified and irrational irritation, he realized – and opened his book to take notes.

After physics was speech, and then chemistry. As soon as chem was dismissed Adam headed back to his dorm. Noah had said he would be at an all-day party - or it may have been a meditation club meeting, Adam couldn’t remember - so the dorm was empty and quiet when Adam got there.

It was lunch time, but Adam was too tired to make himself anything or to bother going to the cafeteria. He set an alarm to wake him up in a few hours and fell face first into bed.

When the alarm went off he got up and made himself a bowl of cereal, then sat cross-legged in bed, his notes and homework spread out in front of him, the cereal box at his knee. He only had a few hours before work, so he munched cereal and got as much done as he could.

+

The parlor was as busy as usual on a weekday evening, and Adam passed the time with ease making coffee runs, working behind the counter, and chatting with his co-workers. He’d just finished a short coloring job when a familiar man walked in.

“You’re just on time,” Adam told him. He set down the design he’d been idly working on and turned for the back. “Follow me.”

+

Ronan waited in the lobby for a while, and he wasn’t sure why he did. If he’d known Gansey would be so excited to make friends with Adam, he would have turned around the second he realized Adam worked here.

When it was Gansey and Ronan, it was GanseyandRonan. Nothing and no one had threatened that since high school. They were brothers, comrades in arms, a king and his gallant knight.

Ronan should have expected that Adam would be able to find his way between them. He was too smart, too kind, too interesting to not have caught Gansey’s eye. He was calculating where Ronan was impulsive, genial where Ronan was cruel. No wonder Gansey had been so badly impressed.

And it hadn’t taken any effort from Adam at all. He probably hadn’t even been aware of what he was doing.

Ronan checked his watch. It would have been more sensible to have gone to class this morning and talked to Adam there, and he regretted now the time he was wasting and the work he would have to make up. Ronan was about as adept at physics as he was happy about the prospect of studying it.

Finally, Adam emerged from a door in the back, an older man behind him. The man clapped Adam on the shoulder, his hand spread wide over Adam’s narrow frame, and Adam flinched.

Ronan took a step towards him, then stopped.

He watched as Adam slowly leaned away from the stranger until the hand fell from his shoulder and he was safely at his place behind the counter. His mouth drew down a bit when he saw Ronan waiting in the lobby.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

Ronan walked up to the counter and leaned on it with all his weight. A small, unhelpful part of his mind noticed that Adam was in work clothes today instead of what Ronan had taken to be his school clothes. Where Ronan had expected tattoos, his white tank revealed nothing but dark skin and freckles. “Gansey sent me. Who’s that guy?”

Adam’s frown deepened. “A client.”

Ronan looked over his shoulder and watched as the man left. “I didn’t know you could give guys tattoos in alleys,” he said. “And without your kit.”

Adam bristled. “Gansey sent you?”

Ronan shrugged and scratched at the leather bands around his wrist. “He thinks you’re nice and he’s tired of my antagonistic attitude. Plus, you showed interest in his king, so there’s no getting out of it now.”

Adam’s fair brow furrowed in distrust. “’It’?” he said.

“Pizza. Downtown. Greasy.”

Adam glanced at the monitor, uneasy or reluctant. “I… need to log in one more appointment before I leave,” he said, not quite looking at Ronan.

Ronan looked behind him. The lobby was empty; the only customers in the shop were already under the needle at the hands of the other artists.

“Just one more?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah.”

Ronan looked down at his new tattoo. It was still a little red around the edges, but a little more poking wouldn’t make it much worse. “I guess you can color in the petals on this.”

“What?” Adam said. “Are you serious?”

Ronan dug his wallet out of his pocket and handed Adam his card. “Yeah. It won’t take long, will it? Gansey wants us to meet him in half an hour.”

Adam looked ready to bristle again. His already tense posture and thinned lips showed this was probably something he did often. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

He was holding Ronan’s card between his thumb and forefinger like it was something nasty he’d picked up off the ground. Ronan glanced from the card to Adam’s face to the monitor. “What?” he said. “Can’t you go ahead and charge me before you do it?”

“That’s not…” Adam said, but he didn’t look interested in carrying the conversation any further. He quickly typed something on the keyboard, swiped Ronan’s card, and handed it back to him. He stepped out from behind the counter and glanced at Ronan over his shoulder. “Come on.”

Ronan followed Adam to the same chair he’d sat in last time and watched while Adam got his things ready. He shook his head at almost every color Adam showed him until finally Adam decided on white, a soft yellow, and the exact pink of Ronan’s work apron.

“Funny,” Ronan said.

Adam tore open the antiseptic wipe packet with his teeth and scooted closer on his stool. “Give me your hand,” he said.

Ronan looked around the parlor as Adam scrubbed the raw skin on and around his tattoo with more attention than Ronan thought was necessary. This was another reason why Gansey liked him; he was a meticulous worker. He had the hard-earned charm Ronan refused to acquire.

Most of the parlor’s space was overtaken by randomly placed stools and chairs that went mostly unused. It was a small area to begin with, made smaller by the dim lighting and the illusion of privacy. Ronan’s eye caught on a calendar across the room featuring tanned, beautiful women and expensive, more beautiful cars. He smiled. He’d given Gansey the same calendar for his birthday, once.

Ronan heard Adam’s gloves crinkle and looked over as he turned his pen on. It gave a happy whir and this time Ronan didn’t look away. Adam bent his head close over Ronan’s hand and air-traced the petals of the flower before picking one and pressing down. Ronan’s thumb twitched. Adam held it down with his own.

Adam was silent as he steadily colored in each petal, pausing as he was done with each to wipe away small pinpricks of blood and excess ink. When he was done he let Ronan look at the tattoo and nod his approval, then quickly wiped and wrapped it before Ronan could pull away.

Ronan debated tearing the bandage off, but instead he watched Adam put his things away and then lead him outside to the BMW.

“Wait,” Adam said when Ronan pulled open the driver’s side door. Ronan dropped his keys in the driver’s seat and looked back to see Adam standing at the rear bumper, his grip white-knuckled on the handlebars of a crappy looking bike. “Where can I-?”

“One sec,” Ronan said. He leaned in to pop the trunk. “Just throw it in the back.”

Adam’s long look into the back of the car had Ronan thinking it was full of hiking equipment or something else of Gansey’s the Pig didn’t allow, but when he went to Adam’s side and peered in he saw it was empty.

Adam made no move to put the bike in the car, so Ronan grabbed it from him. With some maneuvering and a lot of swearing, he got it secure.

A few seconds later Ronan was in the driver’s seat and Adam had carefully and silently buckled himself into the passenger’s seat. Ronan noticed Adam looking at his CD’s, but Adam kept his hands still in his lap. Ronan pulled the car out of the parking lot in a messy, rough slide and got them on the road. He didn’t mind the silence.

+

Ronan’s driving skills were, objectively, acceptable. He got Adam, himself, and the other contents of the car to a small diner in one piece.

Said diner was neon-lit, set far back from the street between an abandoned barbers shop and a laundromat, and extremely obvious in its attempt to seem shabby and secluded.

Ronan pulled in alongside an old orange Camaro Adam would have recognized as Gansey’s even if Gansey weren’t leaning against it. Gansey was dressed the same as he had been Monday, except tonight his polo was peach instead of aquamarine and a pair of ancient-looking wireframes sat low on his nose. His head was bent over a large, leather-bound journal in his hands, and he was so immersed in it he didn’t notice Adam and Ronan’s arrival until Ronan flicked his ear.

“Ouch,” said Gansey dispassionately. He shut the journal against his chest and slowly raised a hand to cup his ear. Then he noticed Adam and immediately put on his brightest smile. It was only a watt or two down from the presidential smile he’d given Adam the first time they’d met, but Adam thought it was an improvement nonetheless.

“Adam!” Gansey said joyfully. “Thanks for coming.” He held out a fist to Adam and after a moment Adam did the same. Ronan snickered as they shyly bumped fists.

“Lynch,” Gansey said, gesturing to the door. “Lead the way.”

As Ronan preceded them into the diner, Adam watched him and Gansey and their undeniable closeness, noticing the looks they shared every few seconds like they couldn’t enjoy anything without involving the other. Adam had previously thought it would make more sense to befriend Gansey rather than Ronan, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that he couldn’t have one without the other.

Adam slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around for an identifying sign or feature, but the diner seemed intent on keeping its interior obscure as well. Single paned mirrors hung over every checkerboard-print booth and flashy linoleum table, reflecting Ronan’s expensive watch and Adam’s own dusty reflection.

Adam found himself in the center of a booth seat, facing Ronan and Gansey and trying to remember the last time he’d gone out with people his age.

Elementary school had been a blur of uncommitted friendships that started and ended on the school bus, and middle school was one friend after another turned off by Adam’s reluctance to visit for too long and his inability to have anyone over. By the time he reached high school he hadn’t had any time for friends at all.

Now he didn’t talk much with anyone except for Noah, but Noah wasn’t here. Adam wished badly he could have invited him; his own social clumsiness would have been overshadowed by Noah simply sitting there.

Luckily, Gansey didn’t wait for him to strike up an interesting conversation. He set his giant journal on the table and flipped through it in chunks, giving Adam half-glimpses of diagrams and latin phrases and sketches of birds until he settled on a page entirely filled with cramped, urgent handwriting.

Ronan propped his head in his hands and stared at his reflection as Gansey turned the journal around to face Adam.

“After you mentioned Vortigern, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I’d read more than just a mention of him before. So I went through my books again and I found this. He was a few centuries before Glendower, but look here-” Gansey jabbed at the bottom of the page, where he’d underlined _Vortigern_ and _believed to consult with the Fae_ and put in parentheses _the Fae here are to Vortigern what Glendower’s magicians are to him?_

“Ronan and I found a faerie ring on Friday. I heard what I think may have been _voices_ when I held my arm over it. Voices of faeries,” he paused, for emphasis or to gauge Adam’s reaction, but Adam very decidedly kept his eyes on the journal. Gansey went on, “Vortigern was said to take advice from faeries and traveled with them in the same way Glendower did his magicians. They both used the ley lines. It can’t be a coincidence, don’t you think?”

A waitress showed up then, saving Adam from having to answer. She wore an apron tied at the waist of her loose jeans and a brown tee reading _LADY PRESIDENT._ She was attractive in a way Adam couldn’t help noticing, even as his mind reeled from everything Gansey had just said.

“Hi, I’m Blue, and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get your drinks?” She asked, in an accent that was unmistakably Henrietta. Her eyes skipped from Gansey’s fancy clothes to Ronan’s pissy expression and finally settled on Adam.

“Water, please,” Adam said, trying to figure out if he remembered her from somewhere or if it was only her accent making her seem so familiar. She definitely looked his age with her spiky hair and round, chubby face. Perhaps he’d seen her in passing on campus.

“Coke,” Ronan said to her reflection. He was staring at his tattoo in the mirror; he’d taken the wrap off his hand at some point and his reddened skin almost hid the new pale colors on the petals.

“Coffee,” said Gansey distractedly, his attention focused on his journal. “With a lot of sugar, please.”

Adam watched Blue walk away. She was very pretty, but there was no way he’d try talking to her when he hardly knew the two boys he was with.

Gansey had again lost himself in his journal, which he seemed to be somewhat successfully reading upside down. Adam tried prompting him back to reality with, “Why are you looking for Glendower, exactly?”

Gansey looked up to meet Adam’s gaze. “Do you believe in coincidences, Adam?”

“I guess it depends,” Adam said carefully.

“I told you about the legends of sleeping kings, and I told you that I think, after he disappeared, Glendower became one of them.” Gansey’s gaze became heavy, measuring. He glanced at Ronan, then seemed to decide something. “I don’t mean this as a metaphor, Adam. I truly believe that Glendower is still alive, sleeping underground. And I believe that it’s my responsibility to find him.”

“You believe he’s been sleeping for centuries,” Adam said. “Actually sleeping. Kept alive by magic.” He couldn’t think of anything but to repeat Gansey’s words. They were unreal. Impossible. Laughable.

“Yes,” Gansey said, his eyes alight like they had been back at the parlor. “And I believe that when I find him and wake him up, he will grant me a favor.”

“And he’s on a-” Adam faltered. He looked from Gansey to Ronan, waiting for one of them to laugh, waiting to be made fun of. But Ronan was checking his teeth in the mirror, and Gansey’s face was still terribly earnest.

“What exactly are ley lines?” Adam asked.

Ronan leaned against Gansey and into Adam’s space. “They’re energy lines that run beneath the ground. Gansey followed them to find clues on Glendower in Henrietta, but here they’ve only led to rocks and fucking faeries.”

“We think the faeries are taking energy away from the lines,” Gansey said hurriedly. “The energy from the ley lines concentrates so strongly around the ring that I can’t get readings on anything else.”

Again Adam waited for one of them to laugh at him. Again Ronan checked his teeth. Again Gansey looked earnest. “You think faeries are taking energy from a sleeping Welsh King?”

“He’s a scientist,” Ronan told Gansey, “you’re going to scare him off.”

“Right,” Gansey said importantly. “Adam, come with us to the forest. You can see the energy readings for yourself.”

Blue showed up with drinks, again saving Adam from having to immediately answer Gansey, and because Adam had been watching Gansey he saw the minute widening of his eyes.

When they ordered their drinks, Gansey had been too absorbed in searching his journal for notes to notice Blue at all. Now he was staring.

Blue set all of their drinks down. She took out her notepad and caught Gansey’s eye. “Yes?” she said.

“What?” Gansey managed to stammer the single syllable.

Ronan made an unkind sound.

“Are you ready to order?” Blue rephrased, arching an eyebrow.

“Of course,” Gansey said quickly. He pushed his wireframes up on his nose and glanced down at the menu, then at Adam. “Are you okay with sharing a pizza?”

Divided between them the cost would be pretty cheap. Adam nodded.

Blue tucked her notepad back into her apron. “It’ll be right out,” she said. She turned for the kitchen.

“Excuse me,” Gansey said, a little too loudly. Blue looked back at him. Her eyebrow was definitely arching higher by the second. “What’s your name?” Gansey asked.

Blue didn’t roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. Ronan laughed. Again Gansey looked extremely embarrassed.

“It’s Blue,” she said, and walked away.

“Does she not like me?” Gansey asked Adam and Ronan, a little hectically. “Blue. That can’t be her real name, can it? That’s a… color. Was she lying?”

“I think she was offended,” Adam said delicately, “because she already told us her name. Earlier. When she took our drink orders.”

Gansey dropped his face into his hands, skewing his glasses. “Oh, god,” he said.

Ronan looked away from the mirror to punch Gansey in the arm. “Shit, man,” he whispered. “Are you _blushing_?”

“Shut up,” Gansey muttered.

Adam was very glad he’d kept quiet about his attraction to Blue. He was also glad to see this boyish, embarrassed side to Gansey.

“Faerie hunting,” Ronan said to Adam. “Magic shit. Tomorrow. You in?”

“Are you really serious?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “And you gotta make sure you bring garlic, in case they get testy.”

“That’s vampires, asshole,” Adam said, and Ronan laughed.

The laughter surprised Adam. He glanced at Gansey and saw that he was smiling. Loosely. Lazily. Looking between Ronan and Adam. And Adam felt that maybe this was what he had been lacking.

They didn’t say anything about it, and Gansey filled the comfortable lull in conversation with random facts about Glendower and ley lines until their pizza arrived, and then there was much more eating than talking.

Finally the pizza was gone and paid for - with a rather heavy tip left by Gansey - and Gansey was discreetly watching Blue walk away as he finished off his coffee. Ronan hit him over the head when he was done and pushed him out of the booth.

Adam got his bike out of Ronan’s BMW himself and bid the two boys goodbye while Gansey was distracted with something in his Camaro and Ronan was busy leaning into the car but being otherwise unhelpful.

Adam walked his bike around the corner of the restaurant and stopped. Because Blue was standing there, not smoking or on her phone but looking up at the stars. Adam’s bike creaked as he walked up to her.

“Hi, Blue,” he said.

“Hi,” Blue said uncertainly.

Adam stuck his hand out. “Adam,” he said.

Blue shook his hand, then peered around his shoulder. “Where are your friends?”

“Driving home, I guess. I live on campus so I’m going the other way.”

Blue accepted that without comment and looked away. She didn’t seem to be annoyed with Adam, but she did seem very annoyed.

“I’m sorry about Gansey,” Adam said. “About him not remembering your name. I don’t know him well, but I think he’s a good person. He felt bad about offending you.”

Blue smiled, a little. She dug her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and rocked forward on her heels. “Rich boys should have enough sense of responsibility to apologize for themselves,” she said.

Adam couldn’t say he didn’t agree with her. “I know. I think he just didn’t want to bother you any more.”

Blue shrugged. “Thanks.” She looked past Adam’s shoulder again, but neither Gansey nor Ronan appeared.

“Well,” Adam said, “It was nice meeting you. Have a good night.”

“Wait,” Blue said, stepping closer. “I overheard…were you guys talking about ley lines?”

“Oh,” Adam said, surprised. “Yeah, he was. Gansey, I mean. He’s using them to find a Welsh king, but I don’t know much about them.”

“Oh, okay,” Blue said. She toyed with a patch on the thigh of her jeans. “That’s interesting. Well, thanks for apologizing, even though you shouldn’t be the one apologizing.” She pointedly glanced at the watch on her wrist - a plastic one like Adam’s. “My break is over, so, bye.”

Adam waved. “Bye.” He watched Blue walk away for a moment, then climbed onto his bike and pushed off the sidewalk. He wanted to be in bed already with the lights off. He needed some quiet to think. His head was full of fanciful things - magical energy lines and faeries and sleeping king’s miles underground - rather than the history homework he wasn’t yet finished with or the money he needed to make by the end of the week.

Adam’s bike bumped onto the sidewalk. He almost couldn’t focus enough to keep it in a straight line. No one could sleep for centuries. Faeries were nothing more than a children’s tale. Any energy running beneath the ground was either manmade or scientifically explainable. Adam was hard-wired not to believe in anything without science and proven facts supporting it. He couldn’t start accepting things at face value after an entire life of never believing anything without proof.

And then there was Gansey. Adam was not in the business of giving people chances, as people tended to disappoint him, but there was something about Gansey that rubbed him the wrong way. Or, rather, the right way. There was something admirable about believing in magic just because you really wanted to.

Just as Adam reached the end of the sidewalk and paused at the stop sign, headlights - from behind him, not from the street in front of him - illuminated his path.

Adam looked over his shoulder just in time to see the orange Camaro give a wet cough and stutter to a stop in the middle of the road. The shark-nosed BMW behind it honked and nudged its rear bumper. When the Camaro was unresponsive, the BMW pulled to the side of the road and its engine cut off a second later.

Adam waited to see if Ronan would get out to help Gansey, but he remained hidden behind dark tinted windows. The Camaro shuddered again. Adam turned on his bike and pedaled over to the passenger-side window.

Gansey rolled down the window at Adam’s approach. “I was going to drive up behind you and offer you a ride home, but,” he gave a short, self depreciating laugh. Then he slowly leaned forward until his forehead was pressed to the thin steering wheel.

Adam looked in at the interior of the car and then at the steaming engine. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out the problem. Daringly, he asked, “Do you want me to fix it for you? I know a bit about cars.”

That laugh again. Gansey ran one hand over the dashboard, slowly, like he was paying attention to its every detail. “I’ve had this car for four years and I still have to call a mechanic every time it breaks down. Could you teach me how to fix it instead?”

“Yeah,” Adam said as Gansey got out of the Camaro. “Sure.”

Together they wrestled the car to the shoulder, taking turns pushing and steering. It wasn’t until the car was completely over that Adam heard the door to the BMW slam shut. A second later Ronan had taken up post at the Camaro’s side. He didn’t say anything but stared Adam down to the point it was uncomfortable. Adam leaned his bike in the grass beside the Camaro’s back tire and followed Gansey to look at the engine.

“You said this happens often?” Adam asked.

“It does,” Gansey said, his voice fond. “Back at home I’m on a first name basis with every roadside mechanic there is. Since moving up here the Pig’s breakdowns have been quite unpleasant.”

Adam thought perhaps they had been quite unpleasant because Charleston’s locals were by nature wary of rich college boys in bright polos, but he wasn’t about to tell Gansey this. Spotting what had most likely lead to the Camaro’s demise, he leaned over and reached in. The smell and feel of gasoline and grease was at once comforting and tiring.

He wasn’t ready yet to say _Aglionby_ , so he didn’t know why he said, “You and Ronan went to Aglionby Academy, right?”

“Yes, we did. What about you? I don’t think you mentioned it the other night.”

“Mountain View,” Adam said. Then, in a rush, “Actually, I went to Aglionby for freshman year. I was on a partial scholarship, but I couldn’t pay for a second year.”

“You paid your way through a year of Aglionby on your own, too?” Gansey said.

There was no judgement in his tone, only curiosity; and maybe, if Adam wasn’t imagining it, respect. After a moment Adam nodded. “I worked three jobs. One was as a mechanic.”

Gansey made a sort of awed sound, his smile wide as he looked at Adam. “It’s amazing that we’re just now meeting. It’s amazing that we’re meeting at all, really.”

Ronan gave a dry huff of a laugh. “Gansey doesn’t believe in coincidences,” he said.

Gansey pointed a meaningful finger at Ronan, then said to Adam, “You’re some sort of genius, from what I’ve heard from Ronan. You could help him study sometime, if you were feeling charitable.”

Adam glanced at Ronan and got a sour look in response. “Would anyone actually volunteer for that?” he asked.

Gansey laughed. “Maybe not. I might end up having to hang up flyers. My Latin isn’t the best.”

“I don’t need help in Latin,” Ronan growled.

Adam showed Gansey what had clogged the Camaro’s lungs and how he’d temporarily fixed it. “You can probably get home with it the way it is, but you need to get it to a shop as soon as you can.”

“Thanks, Adam,” Gansey said warmly. “I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.”

“You probably would’ve had to beg a mechanic to put up with you long enough to fix it again,” Ronan said.

“Thanks,” Gansey said to Ronan. He closed the hood and turned to Adam, his hands on his hips. He didn’t seem to notice he was staining his polo shirt with grease. “I’ll give you a lift home, since Ronan is preoccupied.”

Ronan shook his keys at Gansey. “Don’t get all pissy.”

“Don’t murder your car,” Gansey replied.

“Bye Dad,” Ronan said happily, “don’t wait up.”

Adam and Gansey waved Ronan down the street, then folded Adam’s beat-up bike into the Camaro’s beat-up trunk. Gansey didn’t have a wide collection of CD’s like Ronan, and his radio didn’t seem to work, either. Adam looked out the window and watched the dim streetlights and half-lit storefronts as they drove by.

The short car ride was mostly silent, broken up by random Glendower trivia from Gansey and coughs from the Camaro that made them both hold their breath.

Gansey drove through campus and dropped Adam off right at his dorm building. He was smiling, fidgety, his wave too enthusiastic when Adam got out of the car. Adam got his bike out of the trunk himself, knocked on the hood, and turned for his dorm. The Camaro gave a happy honk at his back and ambled away.

Adam chained his bike outside the door and silently made his way up the stairs. He was confused. Excited. Nervous. He didn’t understand how a person like Gansey could spend years obsessing over a dead Welsh king and he didn’t understand how a person like Ronan could spend years enabling him. He wondered what he would see when they took him to the forest. He wondered if Gansey and Ronan were just crazy. He wondered where Ronan had gone.

Noah wasn’t home. Adam left the kitchen light on for him and fell into bed without even taking his shoes off.

+

Early the next day Adam found himself waiting outside his dorm building, already shivering in his thin t-shirt. Virginia summers stretched themselves languidly over the calendar with hanging humidity and persistent sunshine - today would definitely be too hot for comfort - but he was feeling jittery nothenless.

Before long the Camaro noisily rolled up, looking somewhat aggrieved to be living another day. Ronan had an arm hooked over the passenger window and expensive looking sunglasses perched on his nose.

“Get in, loser,” he said. “We’re going Faerie hunting.”

As Adam clambered into the back of the Camaro, he heard Gansey ask Ronan, “Did you really just use a ‘ _Mean Girls’_ reference?” and Ronan reply, “No the shit I did not.”

“You did,” Gansey insisted. He grabbed his headrest and wrenched himself around to face Adam. “Adam. Good morning. I wrote down what we know about the faerie ring so far, if you want to take a look,” he handed Adam the thick leather-bound journal he’d brought to dinner last night, already open to a page full of handwritten notes.

Adam skimmed through the notes. They were mostly a repeat of what Gansey had told him last night, if only more organized and with more quoted sources. The page on faeries was the furthest back and one of the few that was covered entirely in Gansey’s writing; the rest of the journal was glued together and folded over with newspaper clippings, taped in old photographs and letters and brittle, yellowing paper.

He ended up paging idly through the journal, his eyes skipping over drawings and diagrams and randomly cut and ripped pages without taking anything in. There was no point in reading any of this without having proof that it was true, and Gansey would tell him anything he wanted him to know anyways.

Adam closed the journal and set it down on the seat beside him. He leaned forward against his seatbelt. In the rear view mirror, Gansey was sunny and smiling, the picture perfect model for a summer catalogue or a relaxed family portrait where everyone wore matching outfits and the easy confidence of old money.

One arm still hooked over the open window, his eyes closed against the breeze and sun, Ronan looked much more human and real. He was sweating and very clearly pissed off, though Adam didn’t know if that was because of the sweating or something else entirely. Probably it was both.

Adam looked down to where Ronan’s jeans creased at his thigh. His hand hovered over something there. Something that tilted its head towards Adam when he made a startled noise.

“Gansey,” Adam said. “Ronan has a bird.”

“What?” Gansey said, loudly to be heard over the engine. He was looking between Adam and Ronan like he expected them to be fighting and seemed confused that Ronan was, for all appearances and purposes, dead to the world. Gansey shut off the air co to hear Adam better. Immediately Ronan groaned and opened his eyes.

“Ronan has a bird,” Adam said. “A raven?” The bird ruffled its feathers and turned its head from side to side, peering at Adam with both eyes.

“Raven,” Gansey confirmed. “She’s Ronan’s. Her name is Chainsaw.” He frowned at Ronan. “You haven’t introduced them yet?”

Ronan gestured irritably between Adam and the raven. “Adam, Chainsaw. Chainsaw, Adam. It’s balls hot. Turn the fucking AC back on.”

Gansey did and the wheeze of overworked vents again joined the rumbling of the Camaro’s engine. Ronan didn’t close his eyes again. Instead he stared out the window, the furrow to his brow complicated. Chainsaw made a raspy noise and ruffled her feathers. Ronan laid a hand over her head and she was quiet.

“We’re almost there,” Gansey told Adam, his smile lifted to the rear view mirror.

“There” turned out to be a fork from the main road that, after a few miles, became a dirt path, and, a few miles after that, became a dead end.

Adam, Gansey, Ronan, and Chainsaw emerged from the Camaro as a single entity. Immediately Chainsaw hurtled herself into the air. Adam watched Gansey and Ronan tilt their heads back, back, back. They both looked extremely pleased, fully in their element with the Camaro gleaming at their backs and the forest stretching out in front of them, waiting to be explored.

Adam looked up to see Chainsaw circle the sky once before gliding down to land on Ronan’s shoulder. She pressed her body to the side of Ronan’s neck and rubbed her beak against his ear, either in apology for taking off or some other reason Ronan seemed to understand.

Gansey caught Adam’s eye and beckoned him over. He was holding a gadget Adam had never seen before in one hand and his journal in the other.

“This is an electromagnetic frequency reader,” Gansey said. “It measures the energy along the ley line. Here. I want you to hold it. That way you can see for yourself how the energy acts on and off the ley line. And especially how it acts near the ring.”

Adam took the EMF from Gansey. It was already on, and it blinked unsteadily between two red and orange lights. A wavelength spiked on a thin screen between them.

“We’re directly on the line right now,” Gansey said. He pointed to Adam’s feet. “Move over. Just two feet to the left.”

Adam did. The readings fell to orange. He stepped two feet to the right. They blared red.

Adam was acutely aware of Gansey watching for his reaction, though he wasn’t sure what to think yet.

“This could be picking up from anywhere,” he said.

“It only picks up electric and magnetic energy,” Ronan said, suddenly at Adam’s back. He reached over Adam’s shoulder and tapped the screen. “What else could it be picking up? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“No power lines within ten miles,” Gansey said, sounding supremely happy. “No buildings. Nothing but us and the trees and the things in the trees. Come on.”

Adam followed the two boys and Chainsaw into the forest. Early morning sunlight filtered through the trees, turning over motes in the air and blinding Adam. He averted his eyes. In front of him, Gansey was walking parallel to a stream like a tightrope, putting one foot directly in front of the other. At his side Ronan swore at the uneven terrain and stumbled as the path became increasingly steeper.

The light dimmed the farther they walked. After twenty minutes of trekking Adam looked down at the EMF. He slowly let himself zone out. It was easier to pay attention to the device in his hands than the others. Easier to adjust his direction when the energy fell on either side. It kept him in an almost perfect straight line, right on the rockbed.

Ahead of him, Ronan and Gansey stopped suddenly, Chainsaw flapping uncertainly above them. They had reached the edge of a cliff that would take some maneuvering to descend. Gansey caught Adam’s eye, then pointed to where the stream they’d been following suddenly veered below them, cutting off the path.

“Make sure you watch the readings when we cross that,” he said, “they’re going to rise considerably.”

“Your cell phones,” Adam said suddenly. “What about them?”

“Hmm?” Gansey said pleasantly, understandably unable to follow Adam’s trail of thought.

“Couldn’t they register on the frequency reader, and the readings could have been consistent this whole time just because they’re in your pockets?”

“The signals from them aren’t strong enough to register,” Ronan said. “Besides, my phones in the car and Gansey shut his off.” He jumped down the cliff side and skidded the rest of the way down the path, either not understanding how physics applied to his body or he just didn’t care. Chainsaw screeched “ _Kerah_!” and flew after him.

“We’re almost there,” Gansey told Adam, smiling. “You’ll see.”

Adam and Gansey picked their way down the cliff, then followed the ley line to the stream. The readings spiked as Adam picked his way across the stepping stones, but not so much that Adam would have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it.

Adam wondered what kind of person Ronan really was to so loyally follow Gansey on his search.

Adam’s feet hit solid land and he opened his eyes; he didn’t remember closing them. Gansey had stepped aside so Adam would have an unobstructed view of the clearing in front of him, but Ronan had gone all the way to the edge of the ring.

It was clear now to Adam why Gansey believed the ring to be magical. Right next to Ronan’s scuffed boots, set up in a perfect circle like they’d been put there with meticulous care, were round stones and fungi, all bathed in the gentle light.

Adam stepped closer, and he let the electromagnetic frequency reader drop to his side. He was too bothered by how perfect and out of place it looked to focus on the readings, too shaken by his own pulse suddenly pounding in his ears.

He walked past Gansey. Something in him spasmed as he went to Ronan’s side, just outside of the ring. Then the line went dead under him.

Adam hadn’t named the energy he’d been feeling since stepping into the forest. He hadn’t wanted to. But now that it was gone there was no doubt that it had been there.

Gansey murmured something at Adam’s left side.

Adam turned to face him. “Sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

“Check the frequency reader.”

Adam did. He wasn’t surprised to see that the readings had gone dead.

“Now,” Gansey said excitedly, “hold it out past the ring.”

Adam did. He was aware of Gansey watching him, and he was aware of Ronan going tense. Something whispered inside his deaf ear, but it was too quiet for him to make any sense out of it.

Adam handed the EMF back to Gansey. Then he stepped into the circle.

Ronan snarled something, but he was too far away for Adam to hear. Adam’s hands became heavy. He looked down at them. A single blackberry had fallen into each of his palms. Or had they appeared?

“ _Your friend,_ ” a voice whispered in his deaf ear again, only it was clear now. Adam closed his eyes. He let the berries fall from his hands. The sound of them hitting the leaves at his feet was too loud to seem real. “ _The dead one. Where is he? He was just here._ ” It wasn’t a voice; it was _voices_. They were high and fluting, inhuman. They screeched something, and then they were dancing around Adam, their flimsy nails scraping over his neck and shoulders, their chalk-like feet beating an invisible dance around him. It was too much, too loud, too real.

“Stop,” Adam said. He opened his eyes. His heart was beating too fast. His own hands were wrapped around his neck. Gansey was standing in front of him with his hands around Adam’s wrists.

“Adam?” he said. Sweat was shining on his upper lip.

Adam allowed himself to be pulled out of the ring. “This has happened before,” he said. “In Henrietta. I haven’t heard the voices before, but I’ve felt this.”

Ronan made a sound like a bark. “What do you mean? Feel what?”

“The ley line,” Adam said. “Except I didn’t know it was the ley line last time.”

“Really? Where were you last time?” Gansey finally let go of Adam. His eyes on Adam were hungry, excited. Behind him Ronan’s expression was unreadable.

“It was some forest, I don’t know where. I was lost and it started to storm and I couldn’t see, but I could feel energy beneath me. I followed it to the main road. I’d convinced myself that I’d imagined it by the time I got home.”

“What does it feel like?” asked Gansey in a rush. “Tell me exactly.”

Adam had to remind himself that Gansey was earnest, not demanding. The look on Gansey’s face made him want to be careful, made him want to consider his thoughts before he let them take shape. He focused on the energy beneath him again and struggled to explain, “It’s like a pull. It’s like when you lick a battery, or… how you can tell if a hose is running by touching it. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

“You heard voices?” Gansey asked. “Could you tell what they were saying?”

“They… asked about my dead friend? They wanted to know where he is. They said he was just here.”

Adam had closed his eyes again while focusing on the line without realizing it. He opened them to see Gansey furiously writing in his journal.

“Strange,” Gansey said, tapping his pen too many times at the end of a sentence. “Last time, and just now, too, when I was inside the ring, I couldn’t hear any definite words. I don’t understand why you can.” He was quiet for a moment, then pointed a very serious finger at Adam and asked, “You’ve never been struck by lightning or anything, have you?”

“I… haven’t,” Adam said cautiously.

Gansey nodded as if Adam had said something exceptionally intelligent. He wrote in his journal for another minute, then stared at it for a few minutes more before looking up at Adam again.

“I don’t remember if I told you this,” he started, “but the fae are believed to live on a separate timeline, or in a parallel universe, even, to us, and faerie rings serve as a sort of gate to the human world for them.”

Gansey stepped away from the ring and began to pace between Adam and Ronan.

“Ley lines mess with time,” he said. “If you say something while standing on the line, you could hear it echoed back to you years later, or even years before you said it. I think you’re connected to the ley line somehow. That’s why you can feel its energy, and that’s why you can hear the voices.”

Gansey stopped pacing and crossed his arms. He stared at the ground and pressed a pensive thumb to his lower lip.

“I think they were talking about Glendower,” he said suddenly, looking up at Adam and Ronan. “I think they know where he is.”

“They said dead, not sleeping,” Ronan said. He was beginning - no, _continuing_ \- to look very pissed off.

“They might consider sleeping to be basically dead,” Gansey argued. “Some legends say he isn’t truly alive, but will live again when he’s woken.”

“None of this makes sense,” Adam said. “I’m not denying that I can feel the line or that I heard voices, but how do you explain this?”

“I can explain some of it to you,” Gansey said. “But most of it you just have to believe is real.” He looked at Ronan. His eyes were full of a fierce and uninhibited joy. “You found Glendower’s magician.”

“I beg your pardon?” Adam said.

Ronan gestured animatedly with his hands. Chainsaw flapped indignantly on his shoulder. “Gansey doesn’t actually think you’re the reincarnation of some long dead magic freak,” he said. “So don’t get all sweaty. He’s just excited.”

Adam ignored that with all the good grace he could muster. Again his thoughts were spinning too fast, but now that there was proof behind them it wasn’t as overwhelming.

This was just a different kind of science.

“What now?” he asked.

Gansey grinned. “Now we find Glendower.”

+

Later, hours later, Gansey was tired.

In the time after the forest, after the faerie ring, after writing everything down and running it over in his head until it made him sick, Gansey could not find it in himself the feeling that he deserved this.

He had searched for so long. In Washington, in Wales, all over the world, but it had never been enough. It had never been close to enough.

And then he found Henrietta, and Ronan, and something had settled itself comfortably in the cavity of his ribs, but still the longing had remained. Henrietta had been home - Henrietta was home - but it wasn’t the means to an end. It was small clues and finds, days spent exploring and nights spent researching. He had known it wasn’t where he would find Glendower.

He didn’t find Glendower, and then he and Ronan finished their last year at Aglionby, and it felt a little like the world was ending. Gansey had felt sick leaving Henrietta. He hadn’t expected to find anything in Charlottesville.

He couldn’t stop replaying the day’s events in his head. He couldn’t decide if Adam himself was magical, or if the forest was only enabling him, and he couldn’t decide whether it mattered. Again he considered Adam, the constant furrow to his fair brow, his specific way of moving and speaking. Gansey couldn’t believe a person like Adam had found his way into his life. He couldn’t believe that _Ronan_ was the one that had found him.

Gansey leaned forward on his bed, accidentally causing his phone to fall to the floor. He ignored it. He flipped through the book in front of him, desperate to research, to take notes, to find a new lead.

But there was nothing. Nothing about faeries, at least. He’d have to order some books tomorrow. He’d have to convince Ronan to go to class, and then convince him again to do his homework. He’d have to ask Adam to go to the forest again. He’d have to, he’d have to, he’d have to.

Gansey shut the book and leaned back in bed. Maybe he wouldn’t have to ask. Maybe they were already friends.

He hadn’t wanted to wait. He hadn’t wanted this space of unsureness. Of not knowing whether Adam liked him, whether Adam believed anything he said. He had wanted to take Adam back to the apartment immediately after the forest, to show him more, to give him the proof he needed, but Ronan had punched him on the arm and said, _some people have jobs, Gansey._

Gansey pulled a mint leaf from the plant beside his bed and put it on his tongue. He could hear Ronan in his room, the restless creak of his bed as he rolled in it, the dull beat of music from his headphones. Gansey thought to check the time, then thought better of it. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and readjusted his glasses.

Ronan’s door scraped open, and a second later Gansey heard the sounds of approaching fiends: the quiet taps and flaps of Chainsaw’s wings and claws, the carefully careless thuds of Ronan’s bare feet.

Ronan appeared in the doorway, naked except for his boxers and the headphones wrapped around his neck. The darkness made his sharp edges look less like warning signs and more like the parts of Ronan that were just a little harder to understand. It complimented his tattoo, disappeared the thin line of his mouth. He was already a terribly handsome boy, but the darkness made him all the more terrible.

He looked more like the current, dangerous version of himself than ever, but maybe if Gansey took off his glasses he would be able to see some of the old Ronan. Maybe there would be some of the old softness in his aura, or in his eyes as he looked down at Chainsaw. Maybe the flower tattoo on his thumb would seem brighter.

Ronan knocked softly. The wires from his headphones were tangled together below his neck, looking like a mockery of the ties he had knotted with so much contempt back in their Aglionby days.

There was a phrase to be remembered here, Gansey thought, one his father liked. _A loose tie shows loose morals_. But Gansey couldn’t remember when it had ever applied to him, or his ability to properly tie a tie. Ronan would laugh at him if he ever said it aloud.

“Hey,” Ronan said. He shut the door behind him and went to sit at the foot of Gansey’s bed. Chainsaw chirped happily as she started for Gansey’s dirty laundry.

“Can’t sleep?” Gansey asked, more to keep with tradition than anything else.

Ronan shrugged. He took the book Gansey was reading from him and paged through it, quick. He was obviously trying very hard to seem unbothered by whatever was bothering him, which was strange enough that Gansey let him pretend instead of calling him out on it. Ronan pushed the book away and grabbed Chainsaw from the floor. She allowed him to pet her beak and the sides of her face.

“What do you think of Adam?” Ronan asked.

 _Oh_ , Gansey thought. He didn’t think they’d be having this conversation so soon. He shut his book and set it aside. “I like him,” Gansey said. “He’s nice.”

Ronan looked up. “Just nice?” he asked.

Gansey shrugged. It wasn’t an eloquent thing to do, but it was late, and he was out of eloquent things and thoughts. “You know what I mean,” he said. “He’s good people.”

He thought about Adam. About his presence. The _realness_ of him. The way talking to him felt more like talking to Ronan than talking to another student, another peer. He thought about the way Adam watched him and Ronan, and he thought about the way Ronan watched Adam.

Gansey knew what Ronan was like around people. He knew how Ronan would react to a new professor, or one of Gansey’s rare new girlfriends. He had enough experience to predict what Ronan would do before someone got hurt. But he didn’t know how Ronan would react to Adam. Because he didn’t know what had so easily convinced Ronan that Adam was different in the first place.

Ronan had been the one to introduce Adam to Gansey, after all. To really introduce him, to allow him past the barrier of casual acquaintance. He’d let Gansey invite Adam to dinner. He had to like him to do that.

But Gansey could see Ronan’s jealousy, even if Adam couldn’t. He could see where problems might start to appear.

Ronan looked angry. And tired. Gansey rubbed his eyes again.

“Don’t you think so?” he asked Ronan. “Magical inclinations aside, he’s a person worth knowing.”

Ronan shrugged, unsure. “I mean, we don’t just talk to people.”

“ _You_ don’t,” Gansey said.

Ronan traced his new tattoo. It was the most colorful thing in the room. Gansey let his eyes go out of focus as he stared at it.

“I _mean_ ,” Ronan said again, with feeling, “that we don’t have any other friends. Not any one real. It’s been just us since Aglionby.”

Gansey closed his eyes. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”


	5. into the woods (again)

Adam woke to loud knocking Saturday morning, and it took a minute for his sleep stupid brain to understand that it was coming from outside his door.

He sat up and murmured a sleepy greeting to Noah, only to realize Noah wasn't there. There was only rumpled bedsheets and a perfectly pressed pillow. Maybe he'd stayed at a friend’s.

“Parrish? Adam? You in there?”

Adam picked his jeans up from the floor and pulled them on as he walked to the door, trying to think of what was waiting for him on the other side. A cancelled class? An insufficiently paid book fee? Someone with better grades or more money raring to take his scholarship?

Adam opened the door. Some guy he'd never seen before was standing there. He pointed down the hallway. “Phone,” he said.

Adam watched him walk away. He left the door hanging open behind him and padded barefoot to the shared dorm phone.

The phone was on the table, face up. Adam picked it up with sweaty hands. “Hello?”

“Hi, Adam? It’s Gansey.”

Adam breathed out a sigh of relief and slumped against the wall. “Hi, Gansey,” he said.

“I didn't ask for your number yesterday because I'd assumed Ronan would have it, which was stupid of me. He's not a friend to phones, or their numbers for that matter. So I found this number in the student directory.”

“I don't have a phone,” Adam told Gansey. He closed his eyes; he felt drained, and heavy, like his body was missing more than sleep. “What's up?”

“Well,” Gansey said, “Ronan’s still asleep, but him and I are going up this mountain later today. There’ve been strange energy readings from the base of it that match the energy readings I have from the faerie ring. I want to get higher up and see what's there. If you wanted to come with us, if you're not busy, I was thinking that you might be able to feel changes in the line….”

Adam had seen Ronan in Latin on Friday, but he hadn't seen Gansey since Tuesday, when strange things had happened with the faerie ring. He would not lie to himself: he was nervous.

No, nervous was not the word to describe the feeling. He was unhinged, unmoored, undone. He’d been fighting with himself the past few days, trying and failing to make sense of what had happened.

He knew it couldn't be real, but it was. He wanted to believe in it, but it was hard to. _It's not real, it's not real,_  Adam told himself. But he had heard the faeries, felt the line, seen Gansey’s awestruck face. He couldn't make himself feel indifference when he had such solid evidence.

 _But still_ …. Adam thought, never able to believe in something so wholly, never able to beat the untrust hard instilled in him. At the very least, he would climb a mountain and sweat with some boys he had just met. At the very least, they'd laugh and tell him it had only been a joke.

Adam didn't have anything to do but catch up on sleep, so there wasn't much to lose by saying yes.

After telling Gansey he would go and consequently listening to another few minutes of faerie-filled rambling, Adam hung up and went back to his room.

“Hey!” Noah said, jumping at Adam from behind the door and nearly giving him a heart attack. Adam slipped past him to the kitchen for a drink. Noah stepped on his heels with how closely he followed Adam to the tap. “You're up!” Noah said. “Want some breakfast?”

Adam got his water and backed away out of Noah’s space. He let himself slump against the wall for the second time that morning. Noah went to the microwave, as perky looking as ever in his rumpled university sweater and faded jeans. Adam rubbed a hand over his eyes. The rate his heart was going at couldn't be healthy.

“What's for breakfast?” he asked.

Noah tapped an enthusiastic, uneven beat on the microwave, then threw his hands up when it beeped. He punched it open and tossed a steaming bag to Adam. “Pancakes!” he said.

Adam gingerly let the pancakes flop onto the counter. He looked around the kitchen, but the counters were bare save the usual box of protein bars, chips, and miscellaneous coffee cups. “Did you go grocery shopping?” he asked.

“Nah,” Noah said, grinning, “I just swiped them from the cafeteria. They taste better when you cook them in your own microwave!”

“Right,” Adam said. “Thanks, Noah.”

Noah shrugged in his weird, erratic way and jumped up onto the counter. He pulled his knees  to his chest and propped his head on them; the patient look on his face told Adam he was going to very happily watch Adam eat his twelve miniature breakfast pancakes.

Adam ate as fast as he could as Noah told him about everything that he had done in the past week, repeating some stories and details Adam already knew. When Adam was done he checked his watch.

“Hey,” he said, gently interrupting Noah’s tirade on the campus police officers, “I’m about to go hiking with some new friends, so,” he turned to find his shoes, stalling because he was unsure if it was okay to invite Noah. He knelt down to double knot his laces.

Noah hopped down from the counter. “I’ll go with you!” he said happily. “I love hiking. Didn't I say that a while ago?”

“Oh, okay,” Adam said, standing up. “Do you-”

Noah tapped the toe of his sneaker on the toe of Adam’s. “I've got my shoes, you've got your shoes. All set all set! Are we going now?”

Adam nodded, staring down at Noah’s shoes.

They were the same pair of converse he wore everyday, with fraying laces and beat-up soles. They were crappy in the real way, not in the fake, desperate way that Adam saw so many students showing off. It comforted Adam, a little, to have someone like Noah in his life, someone who was so much like him; someone who was careful about buying bikes and, despite his unstable personality, always knew when things needed to be quiet.

Adam had never asked Noah about his home life because Noah had never offered, but he guessed the beat-up shoes and obsession with material possessions meant Noah was a runaway like him.

A pretender.

Noah tapped Adam’s shoe again. “Where are we going? Exactly?” he asked.

“Gansey said to meet at the Starbucks off campus. I don't know where we're going after that.”

“Okay,” Noah said, though he sounded concerned. Adam looked up at him. Noah shrugged happily and ruffled Adam’s hair. “Cool! Let's go.”

+

The walk to Starbucks was short, the wait much longer. Neither Adam or Noah ordered coffee, so they sat and waited, Noah chattering away while Adam watched student after student pay for six dollar coffees with wallets full to bursting.

For the hundredth time that morning Adam wished he had a cell phone. Calling Gansey to see how far away he was wouldn't do him any good, but the ever present  _want_ inside him hungered nonetheless; to be able to look something up without having to go to the public library computers, to aimlessly glance at a blank screen when walking to class or feigning disinterest, to have something in his pocket of the shape and weight of casual wealth.

 _One day,_  he told himself. His terrible mantra. The headache that was always hanging behind his eyes. _One day._

A chill pricked the nape of Adam’s neck. Noah was watching him.

Adam looked over at Noah, but Noah wasn't paying him any attention. He was quiet and calm, the breeze from the air vents overhead ruffling his colorless hair. He had upended a bowl of sugar packets onto the table and was busy making a castle out of them. He pushed the two salt and pepper shakers against either side of his creation to reinforce the center, but it was all for naught; his hand shook, and the castle fell apart. Immediately he began building it again.

Adam looked back at the line of customers, and there was Gansey, looking hectically and effortlessly attractive in dark shorts and a half tucked in white t-shirt. In one hand he held his thick journal full of all things Glendower; the other hand reached for a coffee while his smiling mouth thanked the barista.

Adam tried to find Ronan, but Gansey spotted him and waved him to the door before he managed to. Probably Ronan was waiting outside with Chainsaw and couldn't come in.

“Noah,” Adam said, getting up. “Gansey’s here.”

Noah looked up from his castle. “Ganseywhat?”

Adam pointed to the door. “My friend. He's here.”

“Right,” Noah said. He put all of the sugar packets back and jumped up. Adam led him out of the air conditioned building and into the heavy Virginia morning.

Gansey was right outside the door, sipping his fancy iced coffee and looking unpleasantly hot already. At his side, Ronan was sullen and sweating in a black muscle T and jeans too messily ripped for it to have been on purpose. Hunched on his shoulder, Chainsaw didn't look very happy, either.

Gansey greeted Adam and together they walked to where the Camaro waited in the parking lot. He unlocked it, turned around, and did a double take when he saw Noah still behind Adam. It wasn't the first time Noah had gone unnoticed by the people around him, so Adam didn't agonize over his feelings. Gansey looked over at Ronan, but Ronan was too busy grinning at Noah to notice.

"This is my roommate," Adam said uncertainly. “Noah.”

Gansey reached out a hand to Noah, but Ronan pushed past him. Chainsaw chirped nervously and wiped her beak underneath Ronan’s ear.

“I remember you!" Ronan said to Noah, more joyful than Adam had yet seen him.

"Oh," said Noah. He half hid behind Adam like a shy child. His hands were cold where they gripped Adam’s elbow.

"At the Blue. You totally fucked that kids car."   
  
"Oh," said Noah, meeker this time.   
  
"A frat party?" asked Ganesy, concerned - though he seemed happy Ronan had a friend. "What were you doing-” His expression turned tense.  "Ronan. Don't tell me you were with-"  
  
"Then don't ask," Ronan said cheerily. It didn't miss Adam that Ronan all of the sudden was not looking his way. Ronan directed his attention to pilfering the Camaro’s keys from Gansey’s pocket.

"Noah, wait," Adam said, finally processing what Ronan had just said. "You crashed someone's car? Were you drunk?"  
  
"No," Noah said, very unconvincing as he shuffled his feet. He looked up at the sky and down at his shoes, at the sweating coffee in Gansey’s hand, and at every other point that wasn't one of the others’ eyes.   
  
"How are you paying him back?" Adam asked. He knew Noah had to have at least a little more money than him, considering the eagerness with which he collected material possessions and the laden care packages he brought to the dorm monthly, but that still wasn't saying much.

"There was a rainbow..." was all Noah said, and Ronan's laugh and Gansey's sigh stopped Adam from saying anything else. Their unconcern made him feel something ugly inside.  _One day,_  he told himself.  _One day._

Gansey wrestled his keys out of Ronan's grasp and pointed a warning finger at him. With no discussion and a decent amount of swearing from Ronan, Noah and Adam clambered into the back of the Camaro, Gansey threw himself into the driver's seat, and Ronan slumped into the passenger seat.

Gansey grabbed his headrest and turned around to face the back. Ronan stole his keys again and turned the air on. Gansey paid him no mind. He was looking at Noah, thoughtful.

“Noah, was it?” he asked. Hot air began to wheeze through the vents.

Noah nodded. “Yep. Noah.”

Adam saw Ronan roll his eyes in the rear view mirror. They both knew where this conversation was going.

“What do you know about Welsh kings?” Gansey asked.

Noah looked out the window. He watched a group of students for a few moments, then shrugged. “I know a lot about the stories of sleeping kings, like Glendower and stuff. And all the stuff with how he's supposed sleeping to be on a ley line, and he can be woken up by whoever finds him and grant a wish and all that.”

Ronan laughed once, loud. He caught Adam’s eye in the rear view mirror and then Adam was laughing, too. Chainsaw cawed and flapped up to sit on the shoulder of Ronan’s seat, her feathers ruffled with excitement. Adam laughed until it hurt, looked up to see Gansey’s dumbstruck face, and laughed some more. Noah observed all of this with faint interest until, gasping, Ronan punched Gansey’s arm and said, “Shit, man. He stole all your lines!”

“Oh,” Noah said. “Sorry.” He reached a hand towards Chainsaw, curious, then drew it back before touching her. The raven hopped down to Adam’s knee. Adam pet her like he'd seen Ronan do and she gave a happy chirp.

He looked up to try and catch Ronan’s eye again but Ronan was already watching him. Adam felt himself flush and he looked at Gansey instead.

“I didn't tell him anything,” Adam said to Gansey. He turned to Noah. “How did you know all of that?”

Noah reached a hand towards Chainsaw again. He didn't quite meet Adam’s eyes. “I like reading about that stuff, I guess,” he said.

Gansey made a pleased sort of sound. He didn't seem bothered that Noah didn't notice him grinning in the rearview mirror. He didn't seem like he _could_ be bothered, by anything. His happiness did not dull or sharpen in accordance to others. It simply existed as it was, bright and pure, easily distinguished from every other emotion in its sheer magnitude. He asked Noah, “Do you know about faerie rings?”

Noah shook his head. “Nope,” he said.

Gansey smiled some more, and told him. He told him about the ring they'd found deep in the forest, and what had happened when Adam stepped inside it. He told him about ley lines, about Glendower, and about his desperate search.

“Wow!” Noah said. “Awesome.”  He seemed ready to believe anything Gansey said. He didn't ask Adam why he hadn't told him about the ley line or the faeries’ voices. He didn't ask anything at all, except, “Ronan, where did you get your pet bird?”

Ronan was quiet. It was only for a moment, but Adam noticed it. “I found her,” he said.

Gansey pulled the car out of the lot and got them on the road.

After a few minutes of driving, Ronan started punching buttons on the radio at random. Adam watched him, and Gansey ignored him. Again Noah reached for Chainsaw and again he withdrew his hand when she looked at him.

Finally, Gansey said, “Annoying it isn't going to make it work.”

“It’s such a piece of shit,” Ronan said, without anger. “You should throw it out and plant some mint in its place. Start an on-road business.”

Gansey seemed to consider this. Then he reached a hand over to rub it across the dashboard. “The Pig wouldn't appreciate that.”

Ronan muttered something. He turned around in his seat to check on Chainsaw, then turned back and looked out the window.

“Sing for us if you want music,” Gansey suggested.

Ronan snarled something back in a nasty tone.

Gansey glanced at Adam and Noah in the rearview mirror. “Ronan used to perform in Irish music competitions,” he said. “He has a lovely voice.”

“ _Gansey_ ,” said Ronan.

“Ronan,” said Gansey.

Ronan continued to stare out the window. Then, with a savage smile, he started to sing, “Squash one, squash-”

The Camaro swerved, and Ronan laughed maniacally. Noah grabbed onto Adam’s arm.

“ _No_ ,” Gansey gasped. “Not that.  _Never_  that.”

“I didn’t think it was bad,” Noah whispered in Adam’s ear.

Ronan punched the radio again. Reluctantly, it let out a static rendition of  _Mr. Brightside._  Gansey grinned and pointed at him in a meaningful way. They drove.

+

Finally Gansey pulled the Camaro over and killed the engine. They weren't at a toll booth for public hiking like Adam had expected, but were instead parked in grass that was so tall it reached the windows. Dirt road stretched out ahead of them, and thick forest framed either side of it.

Adam hadn't paid enough attention on the way to know where they were, but he knew at least that they weren't on public land. He wondered who Gansey had bribed to let them trespass. He wondered if Gansey would go so far as to break the law.

Gansey grabbed his journal, electromagnetic frequency reader, and GPS from the dash and got out of the car.

“Chainsaw,” Ronan said. Immediately the raven hopped to the console and allowed Ronan to put her on his shoulder. Ronan opened the passenger side door and got out. Adam and Noah followed.

Gansey walked around the Camaro’s steaming hood to the others, already flipping through his journal. He stopped in front of Adam and Noah.

“I’ve been here a few times in the past two weeks,” he said. “I haven't climbed the mountain yet, but the energy readings around the base match those we found around the faerie ring almost exactly, so I want to see if they’re the same higher up as well.”

“And you think I’ll be able to feel the line up there, too,” Adam said. Already he felt something beating like a heart in his heels and fingertips, but it was possible that was only his own nerves.

“I know you will,” Gansey said, full of confidence. He held up the EMF. “This doesn't stop working on different points on the line, so neither will you.”

Adam wanted to point out that him feeling an energy source that may or may not exist was not an exact science, and so it could not be predicted, but he just nodded and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. As they all began into the forest, it occurred to him that Gansey thought of him as both a magician and a machine. He closed his eyes and felt for the ley line underneath him. He wasn't bothered by the idea.

Unlike the other forest Gansey and Ronan had brought him to, this one had no paths or clearings at all. Ronan swore up ahead as another branch caught around his body, and Chainsaw screeched. Behind him, Gansey tried to placate the bird and got his finger bitten instead.

“Don't be an asshole,” Ronan scolded her. “You can go and look around, just don't go far and don't try fucking with any snakes.”

Noah tripped and caught himself on Adam’s arm. “Oh, geez,” he said.

“‘ _Oh, geez_ ’?” Ronan repeated.

Gansey looked over his shoulder at Adam. “Do you feel it?” he asked.

Adam nodded. “I think so. But it's not as strong as last time.”

“Ronan?” Gansey asked.

“Could be it’s actually weaker here and the EMF is inaccurate, could be because he's focusing too hard instead of just feeling it. Hell if I know.”

Adam shielded his eyes with his hand as he looked up at Ronan. He was facing away from Adam, his head turned up to the sky to watch Chainsaw above them. He was flushed and sweating, and there was something weirdly charming about his unwavering yet uncaring belief in these supernatural forces when he himself couldn't feel them.

Adam ducked under a branch while Gansey held it aside for him, then held it for Noah, and then they were at the base of a stone face that inclined steeply upwards.

“We’re here!” Gansey shouted, his face turned up to the sky, arms spread like the wind was lifting them.

He stood like that for a moment, looking less like the Gansey that Adam was starting to understand and more like a statue of a war hero or a defender of the world. Then he resumed the loose, giddy posture and gait of a boy adventuring. He jogged ahead of Ronan to a gathering of boulders at the base of the mountain, knelt down on the ground, and set his journal down in front of him. Flipping through the pages with one hand, he dug the other into his pocket and pulled out a tape measure.

Adam and Ronan went to Gansey’s side while Noah hung behind them, his hands gripping his elbows. He was wearing his usual long-sleeved university sweater, and unlike the others he seemed completely unaffected by the heat, but very affected by something else entirely. He wasn’t sweating, and he looked paler than usual.

“Noah?” Adam asked, half turning away from Gansey. “You okay?”

Noah nodded, not really paying attention. He was starting to look less like the excitable version of himself and more like the quiet, barely there version.

Adam looked back at Gansey. He was writing down measurements in his journal, the tape measure forgotten on the ground, Ronan watching him over his shoulder with his arms crossed.

“I knew you'd want proof,” Gansey said, getting to his feet, “so I wanted to wait to show you these measurements for when you could see them for yourself.”

He handed Adam the journal and stepped close enough that Adam could feel his body heat. It was open to a page full of sketches of boulders with notes underneath them and arrows pointing upwards. Written along the margins were lists of measurements ranging between a few centimeters to half a foot.

Adam looked up at Gansey. He was smiling. He didn't seem to be able to stop. Ronan was frowning behind him. Adam believed less and less by the second that they might be joking about all of this.

“They've been rolling upwards?” Adam asked Gansey. He was starting to like this way of talking with him, this heated exchange of questions and answers.

Gansey nodded. He took his journal back from Adam and pointed to the top of the mountain above them. “I think we'll find the reason why at the top.” he said.

They began their ascent. It was not an extremely steep mountain, but ten minutes in Noah began stumbling behind Adam.

“Look,” Gansey said to Ronan, showing him the EMF.

Ronan glanced at it but kept on walking. “It'll probably go back up in a second.”

Noah made a surprised sort of sound as he slipped, loud enough that Gansey heard. Gansey stopped and looked back at him. “Noah?” he said, concerned. “Are you okay?”

Noah shrugged. He looked nervous. “I'm just… I don't think I’m very good at this.” He rubbed a hand over his cheek and looked away. “I'm sorry…”

Ronan looked a few degrees past irritated, but Gansey turned around without hesitation and went to Noah’s side. “I’ll walk in front of you,” he offered. “We’re almost to the top anyways. Just follow my steps exactly.”

Noah shrugged again. “Okay.”

Gansey made, from what Adam could hear, many valiant but fruitless attempts at small talk with Noah. His enthusiasm wasn't affected at all by the slowness of Noah’s replies.

Adam followed Ronan the rest of the way up. He could see the top already, thick with trees and fog. He tried to feel the ley line under him, tried to listen for that hum in his pulse - nothing. It was like it was dead. Like it had never been.

He didn't bother telling Gansey until they reached the top. There was no point if the line ended up coming back on.

A few minutes later, they reached the top. And the line was still dead, and there was nothing there.

Gansey breathed out a soft swear word. He looked up from the dead EMF reader. “Anything, Adam?” he asked, voice hopeful.

Adam shook his head.

Gansey's face fell. Ronan punched him on the arm. “Hey, man,” he said. “Don't get all emo. It's just like in Henrietta. The line gives no fucks about being predictable.”

“It'd been pretty predictable up until now,” Gansey said, pouting. “I thought there'd be at least  _something._  Something connected to the faerie ring. A clue, maybe. ”

“Life isn't a mystery novel, Gansey,” Ronan said, but he didn't say it stern.

“I just thought,” Gansey started, then he shrugged. “I don't know. Let's go back to the faerie ring.”

“Now?” Adam asked.

“Christ, no.” Gansey laughed, but it was weak. “Later. Not today. Now I think it's in our best interest to go to The 90’s and stuff ourselves with pizza.”

“Um, Adam,” Noah grabbed Adam’s sleeve. His breathing was fast. “I don't feel good. I think I need to go.”

“We’re leaving,” Adam reassured him.

Gansey smiled at Noah, bright as the sun. “The altitude might be getting to you. The air’s thin up here.” He looked around the clearing, eyes excited despite the disappointing nothing they'd found. He clapped Noah on the shoulder on his way back down the mountain. “You'll feel better once you've had some pizza.”

Ronan followed Gansey. Noah stared after them, then turned a startled look on Adam.

“Adam-” he started.

“You don't have to eat,” Adam told him. He preceded Noah down the mountain. “Let’s go.”

+

Adam caught Blue’s eye just a few minutes after they were seated. She was working a table across the restaurant, notepad in hand, her spiky hair going in every direction. She waved. Adam waved back. Then he turned around to see Gansey watching.

“So Blue’s working tonight,” Gansey said nonchalantly. He was decidedly not looking at Ronan.

Noah elbowed Gansey in the side, suddenly bold. “She's cute, dontcha think?”

Gansey coughed into his fist. “She is attractive, sure, like a…. like girls tend to be, I mean…” he trailed off as their waiter showed up.

Their waiter tonight was an older man, which was a disappointment ; but he took their orders with a significantly less amount of impatience than Blue had, which was a relief.

Again there was talk of ley lines, but it was more for the pleasure of it than to figure anything out. They had hit a sort of dead end, and Gansey was rallying the only way he knew how.

He entertained Noah with a book's’ worth of legends and theories, intermittently interrupted by Noah’s appreciative  _ooh’s_  and _ah’s_. Adam half-listened to them as he watched Ronan cut lines into his napkin with a fork.

Finally their pizza arrived and Gansey stopped talking to shove it in his mouth with the typical unselfconscious desperation of a college student. Ronan grabbed two pieces and put them on Adam’s plate, then grabbed two for himself. Noah politely shook his head at Gansey’s offer and sat with his hands in his lap.

“So, Adam,” Gansey said, putting down his pizza long enough to look Adam in the eye. “I was wondering if you would you be interested in an internship with a law firm my father is affiliated with? He was telling me yesterday that they're looking for bright college students willing to work next summer and I thought of you.”

Adam put his pizza down. Something simmered in his gut, ugly and familiar. He told himself not to be offended. He told himself that he had grown past letting every little thing hurt his pride.

But he could feel Noah’s and Ronan’s eyes on him. And this wasn't a little thing. He knew it was an act of charity, even if Gansey didn't think it was.

It was charity to Adam. It was charity because it was something he  _needed._ Gansey did not need an in to the game; he didn't need the bright smiles or genial slaps to his shoulder. Adam  _did._  He needed their questions, their interest in his future, their yearning for his youthfulness. He needed their internships and their sponsorship money. He needed their impressive names at the bottom of job applications, their insistence on his amiable character.

“You thought of me,” Adam said.

Gansey nodded. “It's a few hours from campus, so you'd need to live nearby during the summer, but that can be arranged.”

Adam looked down at his pizza. “I’d have to think about it,” he said carefully.

“No rush,” Gansey said, “I just wanted to let you know.”

Gansey went back to Glendower. Adam went back to his pizza. After a while, Ronan’s leg fell against his.

Adam stilled. He considered moving over to give Ronan more room, but he didn't want to piss Ronan off, or make him feel awkward.

He leaned forward to get a bite of pizza, his leg shifting against Ronan's. Ronan's hand dropped from beside his plate to touch Adam's knee, for just a second before moving away. Adam swallowed. He didn't know if that had been an accident. If Ronan had even noticed.

Adam looked at Ronan out of the corner of his eye. He was slumped over the table, slurring something to Gansey about cars.

Ronan’s eyes slid over to Adam’s and caught, then briefly dropped to his lips in a distracted, flighty way before going back to Gansey.

 _That_  had to be intentional. Adam felt himself flush, unsure if he was self-conscious or flattered. He looked at Noah to see if he had noticed, but Noah was busy staring at Gansey. There were no witnesses.

He bent his head over his pizza and listened to Gansey ramble on about the faerie circle and Ronan shoot down every inventive theory he came up with. His pulse was a chaotic thing inside him.

He watched Ronan, but Ronan didn't look over at him again. Adam wasn't sure if he was surprised. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to be.

Later, a few minutes before closing, Blue brought them their bill. “I stole your table from Ron,” she said, a little nervously, looking mostly at Adam.

“Was he upset?” Gansey asked. He politely put down the pizza crust he'd been picking at and looked at her.

Blue smiled, a little. “Delighted, actually,” she said. “He thanked me.”

“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Gansey said.

“Hm,” said Blue. She put her hands on the table and leaned forward. Noah shrunk away from her. “I heard you guys talking about ley lines, and faeries, and, well, I heard a lot. Anyways,” She leaned away from the table and stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. “I come from a family of psychics, so I'm familiar with all that. I just haven't heard anyone talk about it since moving here.”

Ronan shoved Adam. Adam startled and looked at him. “Come on,” Ronan said, his eyes on Gansey. “Let’s get out while we can.”

Adam followed Ronan’s gaze to Gansey’s face; it was lit up like it always was when he talked about all things Glendower. His mouth was hanging open slightly as well, but that probably had more to do with Blue than thoughts of long lost sleeping kings.

Adam gestured to Noah, but Noah was looking between Gansey and Blue like they were his favorite show. Adam shrugged and slipped out of the booth. He led Ronan outside to the parking lot.

It was night now, heavy with streetlight and the buzz of cicadas. Ronan lazily dragged his shoes on the asphalt on his way to the Camaro. Adam hesitated for a moment, then went to stand beside him. With a little smile, Ronan knocked on the passenger side door. Chainsaw replied with a raspy caw and hopped up to balance on the open window a second later.

Adam reached out a hand to pet her. “She stayed in here the whole time?” he asked Ronan. “She could have flown out the window while we were inside.”

There was something fierce in Ronan’s eyes as he considered the raven. He dug a pizza crust out of his pocket and held it up to her. “She never goes far,” he said.

Adam ran the back of his finger along the soft feathers on Chainsaw’s beak. He wanted to look at Ronan, but he thought that maybe Ronan was already watching him. And he wasn't sure what he might do if he caught him at it.

They were both silent for a while as Chainsaw demolished her pizza crust. Then Ronan said, “You should take it.”

Adam glanced at him. “Take what?”

“The internship.”

“It's not as simple as just taking it,” Adam said, “I don't want you guys giving things to me.”

“That's just Gansey,” Ronan said. “It's just what he does. He likes helping people.”

“Like a project pet,” Adam said. A little heat had crept into his voice. Chainsaw shook out her feathers.

Ronan was petulant. “You know he doesn't mean it that way.”

“Even if he doesn't realize,” Adam said evenly, “I think he does.”

“He's excited about being your friend. Let him.”

“Ronan,” Adam said, starting to actually get angry now. “It's not-”

“Just fucking think about it,” Ronan said, so calm and collected Adam felt ridiculous in comparison. “Knowing Gansey, it's a good internship and it probably pays. It could give you a better way to make money.”

Suddenly, horribly, Adam thought back to yesterday, when Ronan had seen him coming in from the back. Anxiety overtook him as he remembered Ronan’s raised eyebrow, his own flinch. He’d brushed off Ronan’s questions, his gaze, but had it not been enough? Had his hair been disheveled? No, he'd checked it. Had something given him away?  _No_ , he was always careful. Had Ronan seen through him so easily?

“What do you mean, ‘better’?” he asked.

“I mean steady pay,” Ronan said, his tone even, gaze unflinching. “In an air-conditioned office, with frail businessmen and complimentary bagels.”

“I like my job fine,” Adam said.  _Jobs_ , he thought.

Ronan didn't say anything. He merely looked at Adam, eyes bored, mouth pulled down in dissent. Adam gazed back, refusing to flinch, refusing to back away. He knew Ronan used silence like a weapon, but he was good at being quiet, too.

Ronan kept staring, and Adam endured it. Then something like a smile tugged at the corner of Ronan’s mouth. His eyes flickered to the door. “The posse’s here.” he said.

Adam looked over his shoulder to see Gansey and Noah stepping outside, Gansey in front and bathed in streetlight, Noah half a step behind him, all shadow. He could see Blue, too, through the window, bent over a table with a rag in her hands, a small smile on her face.

Gansey stopped in front of Adam and Ronan, grinning from ear to ear. “You guys good?” he asked.

Adam looked at Ronan. Ronan turned away from them both and got into the Camaro. “Yeah,” Adam said, after a moment. “We’re fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friends, sorry for the late update. a lot of things are overwhelming right now, so i haven't been as focused on this fic as i want to be. i'm getting back on track though. crazy excited about chapter 6


	6. pizza and homework

Adam almost could not believe that he was on his way to eat pizza with Gansey and Ronan for the third time in two weeks.

He couldn't think of anyone else he would do this for. Gansey had called Adam just as he was grabbing a quick cereal dinner and getting his homework out, and he had said yes without hesitation. Anyone else he would have refused. Anyone else he would have told them he was too busy. Anyone else probably wouldn't have called him in the first place.

He hadn't worked so hard to get into college with any intention of making friends, but Noah hadn't given him much of a choice in the first place. It was evident now that Gansey and Ronan weren't going to, either. Adam smiled to himself as he pulled up to The 90’s diner. He didn't mind it.

Adam leaned his bike outside, just beneath the fog-covered window. He was tired. He was hungry. He was more than excited to sit with his friends and talk about magic like there was no doubt it existed.

Finished with his bike, he looked up to see Gansey waving at him through the window. Adam waved back before turning for the front door.

He really, really didn't mind it.

Gansey half-stood to fistbump Adam when he reached the table. Adam returned it with measured enthusiasm and slid into the space Ronan made for him.

“Hey, pal,” Gansey said cheerily. He slid a plate to Adam, then pushed the pizza towards him as well. “We went ahead and ordered the usual.”

“Thanks,” Adam said. He looked between Gansey and Ronan. Gansey was practically vibrating in his seat, and Ronan was occupied with shooting crumpled up pieces of straw paper into Gansey’s water. “Did you find out anything new on the faerie ring?” he asked.

“We haven't gone back to it yet,” Gansey said. “So we're not here for any particular reason. I just wanted to hang out.”

Ronan leaned into Adam’s space. “He wants to flirt with that midget waitress and he’s too much of a coward to come here alone.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Blue?”

Gansey frowned. “ _Well,_ ” he said. “I wanted us to come here because we need to have a group discussion about the faerie ring. We need a plan.”

Ronan snorted. “You can't plan fucking supernatural forces.”

Gansey’s frown deepened. “Ronan,” he said.

“You can plan work schedules, though,” Ronan said. He looked over his shoulder to where Blue was hanging her work apron on a rack by the door. She didn't seem to have noticed the boys yet. Ronan turned back around and leaned towards Gansey. He whispered, as if in conspiracy, “Did you pay off the manager?”

Gansey flushed. “Of course I didn't!” he whispered back.

“Stalker,” Ronan decided.

“I’m not-” Gansey started, then abruptly dropped his gaze to the table. “She's coming over here,” he said under his breath.

Adam turned to look over his shoulder. “Hey, Blue,” he greeted.

“Hey,” Blue returned. She leaned her hands on the table. She looked at Gansey. “Funny thing,” she said. “My uptight boss just gave me the rest of the night off.”

“Oh?” said Gansey. “How nice.”

“So nice,” Ronan said, “that you have all this free time now.”

Gansey pointed at Ronan in a grateful way. Then he looked at Blue. “Are you busy, then?” he asked. “You can eat with us, if you want.”

Blue arched a brow. “It's not incredibly polite to invite me to eat at the place I work.”

“I realize that,” Gansey said graciously, and Blue smiled. “But we didn't have your number, so we couldn't go anywhere else if we wanted to hang out with you.”

Blue considered this. At length, she shrugged and sat down. Adam pushed the pizza towards her.

If Gansey weren't so unfailingly honest and polite, Adam would have thought that apology to be a veiled attempt at getting Blue’s number. As it were, Gansey seemed incredibly happy just having managed to convince Blue to sit down.

Blue grabbed a pen from her pocket and scribbled something on Gansey’s greasy napkin. “For future reference,” she said, pushing the napkin towards Gansey, “this is my roommates number. Henry. You can call him and tell him you're a friend of mine, but don't tell him you're a student.”

“What does he have against students?” Gansey asked. His face had noticeably brightened when Blue said  _friend._

“Nothing,” Blue said. “He’ll just try to get you involved in one of his movements. It’s annoying.”

“He sounds delightful,” Ronan said, in an unkind way.

“Ronan,” Gansey warned, “play nice.”

Blue ignored Ronan. She looked at Adam. “Gansey told me about the mountain, and about how you can feel the ley line,” she said, and then looked at Gansey and Ronan, too. “And I was thinking… maybe the energy is the way it is because the line is fractured.”

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“Fractured,” Blue repeated, “Like in Henrietta.”

“Do you mean there's something physically wrong with it?” Gansey asked. “Something that can be fixed?”

Blue nodded, clearly pleased to be at the center of the boys attention. Even Ronan was listening. “We had to go out and fix it sometimes, to get clearer readings. It was usually my mom and her friend fixing it, with me helping them to feel it…” Blue shrugged. “We wouldn't be able to do much, but I think if I lent Adam my energy he could fix some of the ley line.”

“Lend him your energy?” Ronan asked, in a tone that suggested he very much did not like or believe Blue.

Now it was Gansey’s turn to look smug. “Blue amplifies energy,” he said, “like a battery, kind of.”

Blue scrunched up her nose. “Not really, but you get the point. We can strengthen the line. It might help with talking to the faeries.”

Adam rubbed his temples. “I still don't understand,” he said.

“It's pretty simple, really,” Blue said. “We won't bother with tarot cards or anything. I’ll just make it easier for you to feel the line, and you'll be able to find the fractures in it that way.”

“You'll be able to fix it by moving rocks, or digging up roots, and things like that,” Gansey supplied helpfully.

Blue nodded. “We won't be able to pinpoint the fractures as well as we could if we used tarot cards, and figuring out exactly how to fix them will be harder than it normally would, but it should be enough.”

“And it'll make the ley line stronger?” Ronan asked. “For sure?”

“Uh-huh,” said Blue.

“Come with us to the forest,” Gansey said to Blue. “Tomorrow afternoon? Please.”

Blue grinned. It showed the gap between her front teeth. “Only if Ronan says ‘please’.”

“Ronan,” Gansey said, voice desperate.

Ronan looked at Gansey. Gansey stared back with wide eyes. Ronan rolled his eyes. “Fucking please,” he said.

Blue grinned wider. “Okay.”

+

“I said I don't need help studying,” Ronan said to Gansey as they climbed out of the Pig. “Just because Einstein’s here doesn't mean I’ll use him.”

“You're studying,” Gansey said, preceding the other boys to the apartment door. “And Adam’s not here just for you; I want to show him something.”

Adam followed close behind Gansey. Ronan swore colorfully and slammed the passenger door of the Camaro closed. Gansey unlocked the door and all three boys fell into the apartment as one sweaty, pizza-sated entity.

Gansey flicked the light on. Ronan stalked off to what Adam guessed to be his room, what with the photocopies of speeding tickets and detention slips taped to the door. Adam walked into the middle of the living room and looked around, not knowing what he had expected but sure that it wasn't this.

The apartment was very bare. It had a small, modest kitchen, complete with the standard appliances similar to Adam’s own. The living room was all couch and stacked books, dictionaries and magazines, colorful quilts and cardboard boxes labeled FRAGILE. An ancient television - the kind with wire antenna - sat on the floor in front of a nintendo 64.

There were tiny pieces of home scattered around as well, but they belonged more to the comfort aspect of home than any aesthetic Adam had expected. A bundle of receipts crinkled under his sneaker as he walked towards Ronan’s room. He eyed a dirty pair of jeans flung carelessly into a corner.

Adam knocked on Ronan’s door before pushing it open. “Do you really want me to beat you in Latin?” he asked.

Ronan was sitting up in bed, his pet raven crouched on his shoulder. He smiled thinly. “You could never.”

Adam walked to the edge of Ronan’s bed. “What about calculus?” he asked. “And physics?”

Ronan bared his teeth. Chainsaw snapped her beak. “It's not your problem,” he said.

Adam sighed. He thought about turning around, thought about asking Gansey to drive him home or just biking back himself. But instead he toed his shoes off and sat on the edge of Ronan’s bed.

Ronan looked away. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Adam followed his gaze across the room to a stack of books and papers.

“Is that your homework?” Adam asked.

Ronan said nothing, which probably meant that it was. Adam crossed the room, scooped the whole stack into his arms, and deposited it onto Ronan’s lap. He sat across from him again and grabbed the notebook closest to him.

Inside the notebook was mostly blank pages, dated at the top but empty in the middle like Ronan had wanted to take notes but lost interest. The pages that weren't blank, though, were filled with writing, filled with the kind of notes that other students would pay money for.

Ronan’s handwriting was surprisingly legible, albeit slanted and a little crowded. Adam was pleased to see that he'd taken the care to highlight vocabulary words and important phrases.

Adam flipped the page again, and a paper fell out. He leaned over to pick it up. It was an essay, perfectly written, perfectly formatted, and it had a big red F written across it.

Adam showed the paper to Ronan. “This should have gotten a good grade,” he said.

Ronan glanced at the paper, then shrugged and went back to playing with Chainsaw. “Yeah,” he said. “But I turned it in late, so it didn't.”

“You did the work,” Adam said tightly, “but you couldn't be bothered to turn it in?”

Ronan shrugged. He didn't look up from petting Chainsaw. “I don't really care.”

“If you hate school so much,” Adam asked, losing some of his temper, “why are you even here?”

Ronan still didn't look up at him. “It doesn't matter that I hate it,” he said tonelessly. “I have to go.”

Adam’s foot twitched where it hung off the side of Ronan’s bed, looking for something to kick. He clenched his hand around the paper, making it crinkle. “I killed myself for years to get here. And I still am now,” he said tightly. “Yet you're here with no effort at all, and you couldn't give less of a fuck.”

Finally Ronan looked up at him. There wasn't an ounce of anger on his face. He was utterly calm. “Why do you care?” he asked.

“Why don't you?” Adam demanded.

Ronan's mouth twisted and he looked away. He stopped petting Chainsaw and instead tugged at the leather bands around his wrist, hard. His gaze, when he lifted it back to Adam, was furious, but when he spoke his voice was soft.

“Henrietta was home?”

The question startled Adam. “What does any of this have to do with Henrietta?” he asked.

“It doesn't,” Ronan said.

Adam stared at Ronan. It took him a minute to reply. “No,” he finally said. That wasn't his home. Those people weren't his family. They didn't matter. Adam never had to see them again.

“But you lived there,” Ronan said.

Adam’s left ear had begun to ring. He raised a hand to cover it. “I did.”

“I don't…” Ronan said, but he trailed off and looked down at his notebook, because maybe he  _did_  know. Maybe Adam was an easier read than he thought. Or maybe Ronan was more observant than he seemed.

Adam was quiet, his anger dissipated so easily by that sore reminder. He let go of the crumpled essay, picked up Ronan’s english book, and opened it up to the most recent reading assignment. He propped it in his lap and leaned back against the foot of the bed.

“I’ll read,” he told Ronan. “You take notes.”

He was expecting Ronan to argue, but, after a moment of rebellious silence, Ronan obediently grabbed his notebook and pen.

Adam began reading, going slow enough that Ronan could take notes and not caring to hide his accent for once. After some time, Chainsaw flapped over to sit on his stomach. The bed creaked as Ronan slumped down against the headboard. Slowly, his knee came to rest against Adam’s thigh.

Adam kept reading. He let himself be lulled by it: the steady sound of his own voice, the heat and weight of Ronan pressed against him, Chainsaw’s rapid heartbeat tapping on his stomach. When he was finished, he closed his eyes.

Adam didn't mean to fall asleep. It felt like no time had passed at all when a soft knock sounded behind him.

Gansey’s voice came from the doorway. “Lynch,” he said. “We doing this?”

Adam looked over his shoulder at Gansey. He was leaning into the room, a wild kind of grin on his face, one hand holding an electric buzzer and the other looped around its trailing wire.

“Are you saying you think my hair looks bad?” Ronan asked, barely glancing at Gansey.

Gansey’s grin only widened. “Yes, I am.”

Ronan shut his notebook and tossed it across the room. He nodded to Gansey and beckoned Adam to follow him out of the room. Adam set his book aside in a more sedate manner than Ronan before following, careful not to trip on the raven happily hopping around his heels.

The three of them (four, if you counted the bird) crowded into what Adam took for a bathroom, but had second thoughts when he saw the mini fridge wedged between the sink and the toilet. This was bewildering, as Adam had already seen a large and fully functioning fridge in the kitchen, but he decided not to question it.

Ronan sat down heavily on the tile floor and leaned against the claw-footed bathtub. Chainsaw hopped over to him, trailing toilet paper from her beak. The spool behind Adam creaked as it turned over on itself.

As Gansey fussed over the clippers, Adam and Ronan watched Chainsaw fuss over her toilet paper. She hopped onto Ronan’s knee, scrabbled for balance, and finally let the toilet paper go so she could grab the fabric of his jeans with her beak.

Ronan steadied her with his hand. “Chicken-assed fucker,” he said affectionately.

Gansey made a disapproving noise but said nothing. He sat on the edge of the bathtub, bent over Ronan. He pressed a button on the clipper and it began to buzz.

Immediately Chainsaw screeched and tried to either protect or attack Ronan, Adam couldn't tell. Gansey turned the clippers off.

“Don't be a shithead,” Ronan said to the bird, but the absent way he pet her ruffled feathers was gentle. “Go over to Adam. It's fine. You're okay. Go to Adam.”

Gansey looked up to see that Adam was still standing by the door. “You can sit down,” he invited, gesturing to the toilet.

Adam nodded. If he had thought about it before, he'd have pegged Gansey to be the kind of person that remembered to not leave the seat up, or to be the kind of person that made  _Ronan_  not leave the seat up, but it was now evident that Gansey was neither of those things.

It was surprising and a little pleasing, this glimpse at private, embarrassing humanity. Adam carefully put the seat down before sitting on it. Chainsaw flapped over to perch on his knee, holding her toilet paper again.

“Stay,” Ronan said sternly.

“He means the bird,” Gansey said quickly.

“I know,” Adam reassured him.

Gansey turned the clippers on again and pushed Ronan’s head forward. Ronan closed his eyes and let his head drop, his hands resting open and still on the tile in front of him. Gansey held him steady with a hand spread wide over his skull and got to work.

Adam sat there, and after a few minutes spent listening to the buzzing of the blades and petting Chainsaw’s neck and examining Ronan’s calm face, he realized he was happy.

It was not an amazing realization. Adam had never had many things to be happy about, but there had always been enough; a good grade on a test he'd agonized over, a break from work, extra pocket change to buy a soda, the muffins his mother would sometimes make. But these small pieces of happiness were always expected or fought for. Never had Adam caught them without intent.

He leaned forward on his knees, careful not to upset Chainsaw, and he just watched.

It was very clear to him that this was something Ronan and Gansey cared about, that it meant something to them both. He could see it in the concentrated furrow of Gansey’s brow, in the submissive, loose bow of Ronan’s shoulders.

This was their tradition. And they were letting him be a part of it.

Adam propped his head in his palm. The only light in the bathroom came from the old-fashioned edison bulbs above the sink. It rendered the space very soft and serene. It rendered Ronan into a different creature entirely.

He was still very clearly Ronan, but he was a different version of himself. The smallest details of him stood out to Adam now; his long, thick eyelashes, the beautiful structure of his wrists. The dark pallor of his skin, his angular jaw. His feet were bare against the tile floor, his toes curled in against the cold. It struck Adam as a very unselfconscious and human gesture.

“Don't stare,” Ronan said, although his eyes were closed.

Ronan’s head was bent, but enough of his face was visible that Adam could see him smiling. It made him bold enough not to deny it. “There’s nothing else to do,” he said. “Unless you want to quiz each other on physics.”

“Asshole,” Ronan said, and something inside Adam settled into place.

Maybe he liked this side of Ronan. And maybe he wanted to see more of it. And maybe that was okay.

“Hey, Adam?” Gansey said, voice soft. Adam looked up. He’d turned off the clippers and was brushing stray hairs off his pajama pants. “I’ll give you a ride back to campus, if you want. It’s getting pretty late.”

“No,” Ronan said, getting to his feet. “I’ll take him.”

“Oh, alright,” Gansey said. Then he pushed Ronan towards the mirror. “Go ahead and look,” he urged Ronan. “Tell me I did a great job.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan said, but he went to the sink and leaned in. He inspected his newly buzzed head, then turned and bumped fists with Gansey.

“Great job, Dad.” he said. “Now do Adam,”

“I’m okay, actually,” Adam replied.

Still grinning, Gansey squeezed himself out of the bathroom.

“Adam!” he called, voice already far away. “Let me show you something before you go!”

Ronan leaned over the mini-fridge and plucked Chainsaw from Adam’s knee. He deposited the raven on his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said to Adam, holding out a hand. “Gansey's about to piss himself with excitement.”

Adam considered Ronan’s hand. He took it. Ronan pulled him up. It was not a necessary gesture, or a practical one, as the bathroom was very small and they were forced to stand very close, and maybe that was why Adam could suddenly hear his own pulse. He could feel Ronan's, too, beating fast against the skin of his wrist.

Ronan let go of Adam’s hand. He glanced at Adam and away. “Come on,” he said again.

Adam followed Ronan out of the bathroom and into the living room. As he walked past the couch, he noticed something he hadn't before.

In the space between the back of the couch and the wall was a tiny town made up of cardboard boxes and, upon closer inspection, was very clearly a miniature Henrietta. Adam squatted down near Aglionby Academy. Half of Captain Crunch’s face smiled back at him.

“That's Gansey’s girlfriend,” Ronan said from the couch. “He loves her more than he loves Glendower.”

“It's not…” Gansey said, from somewhere past the couch, but didn't seem very interested in arguing Ronan’s claim. There was some shuffling, and the crinkling of papers, and then Gansey was getting up from the floor and going to sit beside Adam.

In his hand was a stack of polaroid pictures, the one on top an aerial view that could only be from a helicopter. “This was two years ago, in Henrietta,” Gansey said. “We landed when we saw it. Ravens are Glendower’s bird. I knew it meant something.” He flipped to the next picture, which was of Ronan gleefully holding sun-bleached oyster shells, his smile an excited blur of white.

The rest of the pictures weren't very amazing; they were of stones and streams, hollowed out trees and indistinct fish. But they meant something to Gansey, so Adam let him show him and talk about each one.

“This was Cabeswater,” Gansey said, and Adam didn't miss the way he looked at Ronan when he said it. Gansey was quiet for a moment, then, “I think that maybe this is where you were, when you said you'd felt the ley line before. The ley line there is very similar to the one surrounding the faerie ring.”

Adam waited for Gansey to elaborate. But he didn't. He just kept flipping through the pictures, pausing longer on every one.

The couch creaked as Ronan got up. He stepped over the miniature Henrietta and shook his keys at Adam. “Let's go, Parrish.”

“You don't have to take me,” Adam told him, getting to his feet. “I can bike back fine.”

“Shut up,” Ronan said. “It would be super annoying if you got kidnapped.”

“It's safer if Ronan takes you,” Gansey said, holding out his fist. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, knocking his fist against Gansey’s. “Tomorrow.”


	7. the truth of it

Ronan couldn't believe he'd been debarred to the backseat.

He’d been a little amazed last night, when Gansey had invited Blue to sit down with them and then asked her to come adventuring with them. He hadn't done anything that ballsy since punching Declan. Ronan couldn't remember him ever being as starry-eyed over a person as he was over Glendower or Henrietta, either.

Ronan was happy. Happy that Gansey liked someone, happy that that someone happened to be as weird and unconventional as Gansey himself and seemed to like him back. He was even happy about being stuck in the back of the Pig, since it meant that, when Adam and Noah climbed in, he could feel the heat of Adam’s body against his arm, against his side, through his jeans.

Adam said hi to Blue. He fist-bumped Gansey. He glanced at Ronan and away.

Chainsaw hopped onto Adam’s knee. He said hi to her, too.

_She likes you,_  Ronan thought about saying. The truth of it sent a weird sort of thrill through him. He looked out the window.

It was late afternoon. Hot. Humid. Ronan watched the trees blur by. They were going back to the faerie ring. This time with a psychic - or, at least, a psychic’s daughter. This time not hoping for, but expecting magic. This time with the intent to  _interact_  instead of  _observe_.

“This car doesn't seem very safe,” Blue said from the front seat.

Gansey shrugged. “Safer than messing with ley lines and faeries.”

“Touché,” Blue replied.

When they reached the forest, Ronan permitted Chainsaw to fly ahead and look around. He almost hadn't brought her - he didn't want her near when Blue and Adam started messing with the lines’ energy - but if he'd made her stay home, then he would have been tempted to try and make Gansey stay, too.

He watched Gansey unfold a large map he'd ordered of the forest and hold it out in front of him, facing the endless trees. At his side, Noah made an awed sort of sound and reached out to touch the glossy paper. At his other side, Blue seemed very interested but like she was trying not to be.

Ronan couldn't help staring at Gansey for a moment. He was messy and flushed with excitement, and he looked both very young and very old in that moment, his hands holding an entire forest up in front of him, his chest pushed forward, his smile miles wide. He looked more like a statue of a war hero than a boy.

Ronan looked away from his friend and around for Adam. Without any of them noticing, Adam had gone to the edge of the trees by himself. He was facing away from the others, his arms loose at his sides, his hands balled into tight fists. Ronan could see the heated flush of his neck above the collar of his white t-shirt.

Ronan went to his side. He knocked Adam’s elbow with his own. “You freaking out?” he asked.

“No,” Adam said, staring down at his shoes. “I’m just… trying to feel it. It’s different. From last time.”

“Different how?” Ronan asked.

“Louder,” Adam said. He finally looked at Ronan, but his focus was far away. “I didn't really believe what Gansey said, about Blue making things louder. But now I do. And she's not even trying yet.”

“Freak,” Ronan commented, hoping it would make Adam feel better. He looked back over his shoulder to see that Gansey, Blue, and Noah were still talking excitedly over the map. “Maggot!” he shouted, making all three of them startle. “Come here!”

“Were you calling me?” Blue asked when she reached them, in a tone that suggested she very much thought Ronan was and that she was not happy about it.

“No. He was calling me,” Gansey said quickly, hurrying to Blue’s side, the map flapping in his hands. “He calls me maggot. Sometimes.”

“Yeah!” Noah nodded, eager to play along. “I've heard him call Gansey that  _loads_  of times.”

Adam turned away from the forest to face the others. “Blue,” he said. “I want to try it now.”

+

Adam was on the wrong side of himself.

He couldn't think of a word to describe the feeling, and so he couldn't tell the others. The ley line was louder, but it felt different. Muted. Like something had been taken from it.

There had been a discussion on what fixing the line meant, with a lot of questions from Gansey and a lot more explaining from Blue. Adam had gotten the gist of it while staring down at the ground.

He was still staring down, watching his feet find their way over tree roots and rabbit holes, feeling the wind curl over him and snatch at his hair. He felt farther from the forest than he'd ever been and closer than he'd ever get again.

He kicked a small stone aside and suddenly the line thrummed into him,  _became_  him. It jumped up through the soles of his feet to his palms. He stopped walking and pressed his feet harder into the ground. The scent of moss and earth and all things living rose up to surround him.

“Here,” Adam said, to Blue or to Gansey, to Noah or to Ronan or to himself. “It got louder all of the sudden.”

“Take a step back,” Blue said, somewhere close behind him.

Adam did. Immediately the line quieted. He could only feel it in his fingertips and toes.

“Did it die down?” Blue asked.

Adam nodded.

Blue knelt down by Adam’s feet. She looked up at him. “Okay, so,” she said, “instead of giving you more energy, I’m going to focus right on this spot. You should be able to feel what's wrong.”

Adam knelt down, too. He pressed his hands into the warm dirt and closed his eyes.

Blue’s energy was hesitant, at first. Adam felt it leave him, and then he felt it in the ley line. It flickered to life; It went up Adam’s hands, filled his arms and made them shake. He focused on the backs of his eyelids, waiting for something to come to him, waiting for all of this energy to make sense.

Adam felt Blue give another tiny push of energy, and then he saw the problem, so clear it seemed ridiculous to not have seen it before.

“There's something blocking it,” he said. “About a foot underneath the surface. Something…. manmade.”

Gansey knelt down across from him, and then Ronan was kneeling, too. They all began to dig. Noah knelt as well but kept his hands in his lap.

Gansey felt it first. “Smooth,” he said. Then, “It’s plastic.”

They dug for a little while longer, carefully moving around roots and rocks; Blue had told them earlier how important it was to not disrupt things that weren't meant to be removed. Finally, with a triumphant holler, Gansey pulled a crinkled water bottle free.

The line snapped into place under Adam. “ _Found you,_ ” said a voice in his head. Noah scrambled to his feet and backed away from the others.

“Noah?” Adam asked, getting to his feet. He felt bigger now. Fuller. Like the energy was his. “Are you okay?”

Noah covered his eyes with his hands and hunched over himself. He didn't respond.

Gansey stepped past Adam and into Noah’s space. “Noah?” He reached a hand towards Noah’s shoulder.

“No!” Noah whispered, his shoulder jerking back like Gansey would burn him. “No. Stop!”

“Cut it out,” Ronan said.

“I need to leave,” Noah said, moving away from them, tripping as he walked backwards and blind. “I can't be here. This isn't a good place!”

“Noah,” Gansey said, his voice all authority, all respected power. “Calm down. Tell us what's wrong.”

“I need to leave,” Noah said again, and he turned and vanished into the trees.

+

They ran in the direction Noah had gone, shouting his name, for seconds, for minutes, for hours. Adam steadied himself against a tree trunk when Gansey finally stopped. Time didn't feel real. None of this did.

“Let’s…” Gansey started, then stopped, breathless and unnerved. He stared unseeing into the woods ahead of them.

“Someone call him,” Blue suggested.

“He doesn't have a phone,”  Adam said. He looked at Gansey. “We should go back to the car. We can wait for him there.”

“Good idea,” Blue said. “He's probably just confused.”

None of them, Adam thought, believed Noah was simply confused. But it was such an easy and mundane possibility that they all nodded. Gansey led them back to the Camaro.

Noah wasn't there.

They waited.

He didn't show up.

“He might have hitchhiked back to campus,” Adam said, when it began to get dark. “It wouldn't be unlike him.”

Gansey breathed out a soft swear word. His hand was white-knuckled on the handle of the Pig’s driver's side door. He sighed, then opened it and looked at all of them. “If we don't find him in the next hour,” he said finally, “we’ll have to call the police.”

Adam climbed into the back after Ronan. Blue slid into the passenger seat and pulled her knees to her chest. Gansey got into the driver's seat.

They drove.

+

Noah opened the door before Adam could even get his key out.

“Noah!” Adam said, startled.

“Hi,” Noah said, looking startled as well.

“Just-” Adam said. “Let me go and call Gansey. Stay here.”

Gansey answered right away. “Adam? He's not here,” he said, frantic. “Should I call the police?”

“No, don't,” Adam said. “He’s here.”

Gansey's relieved breath was loud in Adam’s ear. “Christ,” he said. “Did he tell you what happened?”

“No, I saw him and then came to tell you. I'm going to go and talk to him now, though.”

“Okay,” Gansey said. “Thanks for telling me.”

Adam glanced down the empty hall. The door to his and Noah’s room was hanging wide open. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said into the phone, and hung up.

Noah jumped on Adam the second he stepped inside. “I swear I didn't mean to disappear,” he said in a rush. His eyes were wide with panic. “I didn't want to.”

“Where did you go?” Adam asked, backing away from him. Noah was moving too much, and too fast. Adam couldn't focus on him. “How did you get home?”

“I didn't want to go,” Noah said. “It’s not my fault.” He stepped back into Adam’s space, but in a shaky way that seemed accidental. He stumbled. His hands flailed out, reaching for Adam.

Noah’s fingers closed over Adam’s wrists and held on tight. They were cold, colder than Adam had expected, colder than he thought skin should be. The lights went out. The sink in the kitchen turned on to full blast.

A feeling like dread, like fear, like every bad thing, crept up Adam’s spine.

“ _We almost have him,_ ” Noah’s voice whispered in Adam’s deaf ear, a voice that was Noah’s but  _wasn't_. Noah cried out like a wounded animal and let go of Adam.

He backed away in unsteady steps until he hit the wall. His hands were limp at his sides, his posture broken, his knees bent and his toes skewed inward. He covered his face with his hands. “It’s not my fault!” he screamed, and flickered out.

“What,” Adam said, not understanding. He blinked hard and stared at the space where Noah had just been. “Noah?”

Checking every room in the dorm would be pointless. Noah hadn't walked out of sight. He hadn't hidden himself behind a door. He’d  _disappeared_. Adam could feel his brain overworking, trying to process the wrongness of whatever had just happened.

Hysteria was growing in his chest, a funny, bubbling thing. He cautiously stepped further into the room. He called out again, “Noah?”

No answer. Every shadow in the room became a monster. Every silent second became a held breath.

Adam ran out to the hall and called Ronan.

No answer.

He called again.

No answer.

No answer.

Adam tried Gansey. He answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Gansey,” Adam said, “it's me.”

“Adam!” Gansey said, his voice all worry. “Is Noah okay?”

“He disappeared,” Adam said, his voice tight with fear. “I know this sounds insane, but listen. I was just with Noah in our dorm. And he disappeared.”

Gansey was quiet for a short moment. Then, carefully, he asked, “Do you mean that he left again?”

“No. Gansey. I mean, I was standing right in front of him, and he was talking to me, and then he disappeared.”

“He just disappeared?” The words were barely a breath. “You mean he was there, and then he wasn't?”

“I don't know what's going on, Gansey,” Adam said. “I think we did something bad today. I think we shouldn't have messed with the ley line.”

“Just wait there,” Gansey said. “I’ll come get you.”

+

Adam had given up on any dignity or self-consciousness after hanging up. He was sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall and his head in his hands by the time Gansey arrived.

“Adam?” Gansey said. Crouching down on the floor beside him, Gansey took Adam’s hands from his face and held them in his own. His palms were sweaty. “Are you okay?”

Adam looked up into Gansey’s open face. Gansey gazed back at him, his wireframes askew on his nose, his eyes clouded with worry. Adam felt bad for that, at least.

“Yeah, I am,” he said. “Let’s go, Gansey.”

Gansey helped Adam stand and they walked down the hall together, both keeping tight to each other's sides. Adam kept looking out windows and at dark corners, expecting Noah to appear as quickly as he'd gone.

+

Ronan did not think Noah would be at the drag strip.

But Adam had asked him to go and look for him, and Ronan couldn't deny him that. At the very least, he could race and beat Kavinsky. He needed something to wind down after today.

He found Kavinsky leaning over the Mitsubishi, shirtless, his sunglasses fallen down low on his nose as he did a line of coke off the hood. All of his dogs were there, too: Prokopenko, Skov, Jiang, Swan. Prokopenko noticed Ronan first and gave a low whistle. “Lynch's here,” he slurred to Kavinsky.

Kavinsky looked up. He sniffed hard and gave Ronan a nasty smile. “Coming back so soon, princess?” he asked. “Thought you needed a recovery period.”

Ronan came up to the other side of the Mitsubishi, but not close enough to touch it, or for any of them to touch him. He glared into Kavinsky's cocaine-huge pupils. “I’m looking for Noah,” he said. “Noah Czerny. Have you seen him?”

“ _Czerny?_ ” Kavinsky whispered. “Is that your crowd now?”

“Have. You. Seen. Him.” Ronan snarled through his teeth.

“Whatever, man,” Kavinsky said, suddenly uninterested. He leaned over the car to do another line. “He showed up a few minutes ago. Fucked off to go get high somewhere.”

“Don't fuck with me,” Ronan said, though he could usually tell when Kavinsky was lying. And he knew he wasn't now.

Swan waved over his shoulder, to where the crowd was mostly dispersed, was all parked Mitsubishi’s and passed out teenagers. “He went that way,” Swan said.

Ronan walked past them. There were no streetlights this far away from the track, and he couldn't see any faces unless he got close. He pushed past a girl dancing alone, leaned into a car full of laughing kids, tripped over someone snoring on their side in the grass.

Noah's voice came from faraway. “Ronan,” he said.

Ronan turned and squinted into the darkness, surrounded by near-identical cars and the indistinct shapes of people. A hand raised from the top of a Mitsubishi to his left.

Noah was laying on top of the car, on his back, his legs dangling down the cracked windshield. “Hey,” he said, blowing warm smoke out at Ronan. His eyes were as red as Kavinsky's.

“‘Hey’?” Ronan said, knowing he sounded like Gansey and not really caring. “What the fuck, Noah?”

“I didn't feel good,” Noah said. He took another drag, then turned over onto his side, facing Ronan. He closed his eyes, breathed out, and sleepily patted the space beside him like it was a couch. “Wanna come up here?”

Ronan didn't want to, he really didn't, but he put his boot on the front tire and stepped up onto the hood. Noah scooted over more and watched as he laid down. The car was cold where it pressed to the back of his head.

Noah breathed smoke over Ronan’s face. He held the blunt out to Ronan. “Want some?” he asked.

Ronan had found Noah. He was supposed to call Gansey. He was supposed to call Adam. He was supposed to bring Noah home.

“I didn't think you were that kind of guy,” he said.

Noah shrugged, or he shrugged as well as anyone could while laying down. “Everyone here's that kind of guy,” he replied.

Ronan stared at Noah for a moment. He _looked_ normal, or as normal as he ever looked; his hair was a light mess of tangles, his eyes were too active and too empty at the same time. He seemed as okay as he ever was. Ronan staying with him here for a little while longer wouldn't change that.

Ronan took the blunt. “This some of Kavinsky’s shit?”

“Nah,” said Noah. “Someone was just, like, handing them out. Ha! Like t-shirts at a baseball game.”

Free drugs at the drag strip meant they were Kavinsky’s, but Ronan didn't really care. He'd only been curious. He took a drag and felt the smoke fill his lungs, hot and tight. He handed it back to Noah. He stared up at the stars and breathed out.

“Sorry for making you guys worry,” Noah said, his voice small. “I didn't mean it.”

“Just don't fucking do it again. Gansey was gonna call the cops.” Ronan propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Noah. “We should go and let them know you're fine.”

“I can't help it sometimes,” Noah said, his eyes staring up heavy-lidded at the stars.

“Can't help what?” Ronan asked.

Noah looked at him. “Disappearing,” he said. He breathed out a heavy cloud of smoke and flicked the blunt away. He smiled at Ronan. “I know what you are,” he said.

Ronan’s heart surged sickeningly in his chest.  _Those words,_  he thought, _those fucking words._  “What do you mean,” he said, unable to keep his voice from going thin with panic.

“Before I tell you,” Noah said, and his grin was eerily wide now – past the point of glee and too far into something else. “Do you know what I am?”

Ronan could feel himself getting pissed off. And he could feel sweat gathering in his armpits and rolling down his sides. “I don't know what you're getting at,” he said.

“I’m dead,” Noah said quietly. “I’ve been dead for a long time. I've been lying. Like you.”

“I don't lie,” Ronan said. He swung his legs over the side of the car and slid off.

“ _Dreamer,_ ” said Noah.

“Stop it,” Ronan said. But he couldn't walk away. Not without knowing what Noah meant. Not without knowing how he knew.

“I’m  _dead,_  Ronan,” Noah said. “I know because I’m just energy. Energy like the ley line, energy like Blue, energy like your dreams.” He smiled at Ronan’s expression. “Energy like the faeries.”

Noah sat up. He swung his legs, kicking his heels against the Mitsubishi’s window with every movement. He crossed his arms over his chest, and Ronan saw for the first time just how unreal Noah seemed. How pale his skin was. How indistinct his fingers looked. How dark that mark on his cheek was.

“And your guys’ dreaming,” Noah said, “you and Kavinsky - and Blue, too, she helps too –  it’s making me feel more alive than I have for… a while.”

Anyone else Ronan would have grabbed by the shirt and hauled over the hood of the car. Anyone else  _wouldn't have known._  Ronan tried to draw in a breath, but his throat was sealed shut. He tried again; it wasn’t working. What was he going to do, what would Declan say, Ronan had made it this far and now-

“I won’t tell anyone your secret,” Noah said. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

Ronan put his arms against the car. He leaned over until his forehead was pressed against it. He closed his eyes. “So why did you disappear,” he said to Noah. “Tell the truth.”

“I think,” Noah said, “we should go see the others first.”

+

Adam, Gansey, and Blue were sitting on the floor of the kitchen. Blue had left work during the middle of her shift, and Adam had missed class, but neither of them mentioned it. They just sat there, not really talking, not really doing anything, when the door opened and Ronan walked in.

Adam got to his feet, shakily. Everything about him was shaky: his pulse, his body, his thoughts. He leaned against the counter as Ronan stepped into the doorway.

The floodlight from outside illuminated the space behind him, throwing him into washed-out, yellowed relief. Adam had seen Ronan angry, but this was something else, something heavier; his eyes were too wide, the skin under them too tight. The furrow to his brow was worried, the thinness of his mouth stressed. He looked like an animal trapped, a feral dog backed into a corner. All raw, real emotion. He looked how Adam felt.

“You could answer your phone for once,” Adam said to him.

“Something happened with Noah,” Gansey said. “He was at Adam’s, but-”

“You guys can stop freaking out,” Ronan said. “He's fine.”

Noah stepped out from behind him, and he didn't look real. Adam thought he could almost see Ronan’s body through his. But that didn't make any sense. None of this did.

Adam waited for Gansey to say something. But he didn't.

Noah stepped forward. He looked straight at Adam. “I’m dead,” he said. “I didn't want you to know.”

Adam took this in, or he tried to. Because here was Noah, standing in front of him, telling him that he wasn't alive. Telling him that he'd died, weeks or years or centuries ago. Telling him that his best and closest friend wasn't much of a person at all.

“What do you mean?” Gansey asked. He asked it normally, his voice even like he didn't believe it, like he didn't want to.

“I’m dead,” Noah said again. “I’ve been dead for eight years.”

Blue stepped forward from behind Gansey. “The entire time we've known you?” She asked, quietly.

Noah shrugged. “Yeah.”

Gansey's jaw worked. “How-” he started, and stopped.  _How did you die?_  Adam thought he was going to say. He kept thinking one of them would ask it, but they didn't. Gansey shook his head in disbelief. “How are you here?”

“The ley line,” Noah said. “It gives me energy. But when it surges, or dies down…” He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Sometimes I do too.”

“How do we stop it?” Gansey asked, frantic. If Adam weren't working so hard to process Noah’s deadness himself, he'd be more amazed at how easily Gansey had accepted it.

Gansey liked problems. And he liked answers even more. He liked facing a situation and laying out all of the ways to make it right.

Noah shuffled his feet on the floor. “When you guys fixed it today it helped, but… it was too much. Too… uneven.”

“Then we’ll fix the whole line,” Gansey said. “To make you stronger.”

Adam let himself lean more completely against the counter. He'd never been more grateful that Gansey was his friend.

“We could never fix the entire line!” Blue said, exasperated.

“Then we find Glendower,” Gansey said, more desperate and exasperated than any of them. He looked at Ronan for validation, for reassurance. “We use the favor to fix the ley line. To save Noah.”

Ronan was quiet, and Blue was quiet, and Noah was quiet. Adam watched them all consider this, watched them all convince themselves that it would work. That they would find Glendower. That the legends were true. That it would be enough. 

But Adam had heard the faeries, and he had felt the ley line’s weakness, its power. He knew the fairies were real. He knew the ley line was real.

He didn't know if he believed Glendower was.

“We need to sit down,” Blue said suddenly. “I can't think like this.”

Because there wasn't enough room on the couch, they all ended up in a circle on the floor near Gansey’s miniature Henrietta. Noah nervously fiddled with one of the cardboard buildings while the rest of them brainstormed.

“So, Adam can feel the ley line, for whatever reason,” Blue said.

“Yes!” Gansey encouraged her.

Blue smiled at him, then turned a serious look on Adam. “You need to scry. You'll be able to see things in much more detail than you can when I’m giving my energy. You'll-”

“Scry?” Adam interrupted.

“It's something my family does, to get clearer readings, or to find something, or someone. You look into a bowl of grape juice, or a flame, and you kind of… let your soul leave your body, so you can explore different dimensions or times. I would give you energy to push you forward, but,” Blue’s hands were clasped together in her lap, and she nervously wrung them now. “I don't know how we could ground you, to keep you from leaving your body too far behind.”

Ronan said, “What the  _shit?_ ”

None of this made much sense to Adam, but he realized it was their only option; or, at least, it was the best option any of them could think of.

“We need to find out how to fix him,” he said to Ronan.

“Blue and Adam are right,” Gansey said. “I think we should try it.”

Ronan was quiet, his grip crushing around his own arms, his eyes furious on no one in particular. Noah leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder. Ronan looked at him, and something in his face broke.

Without a word, Ronan got up from the floor. He turned and headed for the door. 

“Ronan,” Gansey said seriously, getting to his feet.

Ronan stopped. But he didn't turn back to look at Gansey. “I’ll get the grape juice,” he said. “And I’ll be the one to ground Adam, too.”


	8. down the line

 

Ronan didn't know how he could make any of this work without exposing all of his secrets.

He needed to dream. He needed to scry, he needed to figure out  _how_  to scry. He needed to talk to Kavinsky. He needed to do all of this somehow without Adam or Blue finding out about him. Without everything falling apart.

It had been enough that Gansey knew. And now it was too much that Noah did, too.

He didn't want Blue or Adam to know, not yet. They were too close, too involved, and Ronan couldn't control any of it now.

Last night, there had been more talk of possible courses of action: finding Glendower, fixing the line, saving Noah. After the others had left and it was only Gansey and Ronan, Ronan told Gansey about what Noah had said. How fractured the line was, how it couldn't handle the constant addition and loss of power. How it surged and fell because of dreaming.

Gansey’s face had gone tense. They both knew it wasn't Ronan who was responsible for that.

Gansey had left an hour ago and Ronan felt terrible. He was angry - he was always angry - but there was another feeling in his gut, worse and more shameful than the anger. It was jealousy, ugly and searing. Ronan was not a stranger to jealousy, especially when it came to Gansey, but it was more unpleasant than he was used to now that Adam was involved.

Gansey was going with Adam to the drag strip to talk to Kavinsky. He was going with Adam. He was going without Ronan. He was leaving Ronan behind.

Ronan did not watch the clock to guess what was going on, and that almost made it worse. He didn't know if Gansey and Adam had stopped for something to eat first, or if they were already talking to Kavinsky. If they were already on their way back. If Kavinsky had already told Adam all of Ronan’s secrets.

The jealousy and anger burned through Ronan. It was thick in his chest and throat, making him feel constricted to the point of choking. He kicked over some chairs and boxes. He drank a beer, and then another. He went to his room, pulled his headphones over his ears, and tried to not think for a while.

+

Adam still didn't understand why they were going to Kavinsky.

He knew Kavinsky not as a person, but as the problems he caused: Ronan’s recklessness, and possibly, Noah’s disappearances. All Adam had gotten from Gansey was, _he uses a lot of energy. It creates an imbalance._

Kavinsky was the catalyst of bad news. He was not a person, he was a  _thing_. A rumor spread on the wall of a bathroom stall. A daring whisper in a stranger's ear. The quickened rise and fall in your pulse when you heard sirens. A thing. A thing that was bad for Ronan, a thing that was bad for Noah.

A thing that was bad news.

Adam and Gansey got out of the Camaro - Gansey, purposeful and righteous, a king in any domain, and Adam, careful and wary, unsure of his place or cause. Gansey led him to a group of boys crowded around a beat-up, very expensive looking white car.

Adam knew Kavinsky immediately. A step behind Gansey, he stopped at the car's rear end, and there Kavinsky was. Shirtless, with sunglasses and slicked back hair and a savage grin on the wrong side of wild.

Kavinsky watched them approach, and then he watched them some more. He was like Noah, Adam thought, in the way he seemed completely there and not at the same time.

Gansey put his hands on the car and leaned towards Kavinsky. Kavinsky’s grin widened. His boys stepped to Gansey as one.

At least, Adam thought, neatly inserting himself at Gansey’s side, Kavinsky was alive.

“Unlike you to visit, Dickie,” Kavinsky said. His eyes were everywhere, and his mouth was bleeding. Adam became distracted watching a single drop bead at the fattest part of his lip. It fell down and splattered onto the hood of the car.

“Haven't seen you since high school!” Kavinsky said. “Fucking Aglionby. Fucking, fuck,” his sunglasses tilted towards Adam. “Who's this? You finally replace Lynch?”

“Ronan’s in class,” Gansey said easily, while Adam avoided the gazes of the other boys. “He sent Adam and I in his stead to talk to you about Noah. About him disappearing.”

Kavinsky splayed a hand across his bare chest in mock regret. “So you finally found out,” he said. “Sorry you missed the funeral.”

Gansey’s expression tightened, but it was only noticeable because Adam had been watching for it. Adam put his hands in his pockets. Gansey leaned further over the car. “So you know what I’m talking about. You know you're part of the problem.”

Kavinsky shrugged. He leaned over the car to do a ragged line of coke Adam hadn't noticed before.

“You need to stop,” Gansey said.

Kavinsky made a sound. It was too cruel to be a laugh, too carefree to be anything else. “Stop?” he said, his lips pulled back to expose white teeth. “I’m not hurting Noah, man. I like him. And he really likes what I make. You should see him on his good nights.”

Gansey rubbed the back of his neck, obviously uncomfortable and unhappy, so thoroughly unmoored that he was failing to keep up appearances. “You're avoiding the subject.”

“There's no  _subject,_ ” Kavinsky said. “It's not _us_ , man. It's something else.” He knocked his sunglasses down to expose his eyes, bloodshot with drugs and adrenaline. He leaned in close enough to Gansey that Gansey’s breath fogged the lenses. “Ask your dog if he's been having nightmares again. Ask him if his dream forest-land or whatever is all fucked up lately. Ask him if he's had visitors.” 

“Visitors?” said Gansey, an eyebrow arching up.

“The faeries,” Kavinsky said. “They're in my head, bet they're in his too.” He pushed the sunglasses back up to cover his eyes, then waved Gansey and Adam away. “Get the fuck out of here, before I blow you up.”

“Come on, Adam,” Gansey said, turning away.

“Wait-” Adam said, because they needed to ask for  _more_. More than whatever this was. “Gansey-”

“Adam,” Gansey said, and his tone was final.

Adam gave up. Kavinsky - or one of his group - made a kissing noise as he turned around. He followed Gansey to the car. They got in. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, and then Adam could just not take it.

“Gansey,” he said. “What was that? What was Kavinsky talking about, when he was saying all that stuff about Ronan’s dreams?”

“It isn't something that I…” Gansey started, then stopped, the furrow to his brow complicated. He put the Camaro’s keys in its ignition but didn't start the engine. “Kavinsky was just high. He's always like that. I knew coming here wouldn't do much for us anyways.”

Adam was quiet. He knew Gansey was hiding something from him - something big - and he wanted to know what it was, but now wasn't the time to pry. He'd have to be patient, have to tiptoe around Gansey's uncertainty and Ronan's distrust.

He shifted uncomfortably in the Camaro’s worn vinyl seat. He stared at Gansey’s hands, fitful on the wheel. “How long have you known him?” he asked.

“I don't.” Gansey said. “Know him, I mean. He went to Aglionby with Ronan and I, I’m sure you heard. Ronan would always race with him or turn to him when things were hard… I mean, he still does, sometimes. It's not something I’m happy about, but I don't want to try and control him.”

Adam looked out the window at Kavinsky’s group. They were throwing burning things into the car that had minutes ago been perfectly functional, their heads thrown back with laughter. He looked back at Gansey. "Did they date?" he asked.

Gansey didn't nod like Adam had feared, but he didn't laugh at the absurdity of the question, either. “No,” he said. “It was never that.”

But it was something. And that something bothered Adam.

Gansey turned the keys in the ignition and the Camaro roared to life. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back.”

+

When Gansey and Adam got back to the apartment, Gansey went inside and Adam walked around to the back. He'd gone with Gansey to see Kavinsky mostly for moral support, and come back with him mostly to study with Ronan, and somewhat to discuss Kavinsky.

Adam wiped his hand on the back of his neck, and then on his shirt. It was nearing nighttime, but still the humidity and bugs assailed him. He was sweating in his cotton t-shirt and camo cargo pants. And he was thirsty, endlessly thirsty, no matter how many bottles of water he drained.

Gansey had giddily said in the gas station parking lot,  _Maybe it's something supernatural._

He turned the corner and there was Ronan, leaning against the BMW, a moving dolly on it’s side at his feet, its wheels turning over themselves. He looked up at Adam’s approach and gave him a wild grin.

“Parrish, you're finally here,” he said. He hauled the moving dolly upright and pushed it towards Adam; it stopped half a foot in front of him when it reached the end of the rope that tied it to the BMW’s rear bumper. “Where’s Gansey?”

“Homework,” Adam told him.

Ronan seemed to think this was very funny. “Get in,” he commanded, gesturing to the moving dolly.

“You're joking,” Adam said, but Ronan was already getting into the driver's seat. “Ronan, we have work to do.”

Ronan revved the engine. “Get in!” he yelled.

“Don't you want to hear about what happened with Kavinsky?” Adam asked. He let the name come out ugly, hated, something to be spit into the dirt.

If Ronan heard Adam over the roar of the BMW’s engine, he didn't let on. He just revved it again, impatient.

Adam considered the moving dolly, and then the lot they were in. In was quite plain, all untended asphalt fenced in by ragged sections of rundown chain link fence and weathered plywood. It was obviously abandoned property, though Adam couldn't tell what it had once been.

Ronan revved the engine again and the BMW shot forward a couple of feet. Adam looked past its nose to see a tight circle of asphalt where the wheels had worn all of the color and texture away. The field was hardly big enough to let the car turn around in. Doing donuts at full speed was a recipe for disaster.

“It's safe,” Ronan called, “I already tested it with a tire.”

Adam wanted to point out that a tire was in no way similar to a human body. Instead he turned, set his things down against the apartment building, and bent to pick up the moving dolly.

“Get in,” Ronan said again, impatient. Adam gave him a tired look. Then he grabbed the handlebar, stepped on the lower basket edge, and folded himself into the moving dolly.

“Okay,” Adam said. He could see Ronan’s face in the side mirror, and he could see that he was happy, stupidly happy. “Don't murder me.”

Ronan grinned, all teeth. “I wouldn't dream of it,” he replied.

The BMW rumbled and shot forward, jerking the moving dolly with Adam inside it forward a few feet and leaving Adam’s stomach in its wake. Adam pulled his knees in close to his chest and gripped either side of the moving dolly, this a comfort despite the impracticality of it.

If Ronan dreamed of murdering Adam, then there was nothing Adam could do to change that.

Ronan pressed down on the gas and the BMW picked up speed. It yanked Adam into a curve and Adam leaned with all of his heart into it. He gripped the sides of the moving dolly harder, pulled himself forward; he would not be a spectator now. He was so tired of just letting things happen to him. The wind playfully ruffled his hair. Adrenaline surged through him.

Because Ronan was laughing too much to focus on driving, because Adam was half-leaning out of the moving dolly, because what they were doing was too stupid and ridiculous to not end in disaster, the dolly’s wheel caught and it toppled over, as it was meant to do. It deposited Adam gently onto the asphalt.

They had not been going as fast as Adam had thought. He rolled over onto his back. He heard Ronan’s door slam shut. He raised his arm to inspect the ugly but quite painless scrape spanning across it.

Ronan loomed over him. He was framed by the evening sky, sweating with the humidity and exertion, and he looked happier than Adam had ever seen him. Happier than Adam could think to describe with words.

“Fucking hardcore,” Ronan commented. Adam thought Ronan would hold out a hand to haul him up, but instead he got down on the ground and stretched out beside him, close enough that Adam could feel him breathing. “Bad. Ass.”

Adam had been in close proximity with Ronan like this before - he remembered with some embarrassment how he'd fallen asleep last time - and it felt just as good now as it had the other times, stretched out under the stars, his arm burning, Ronan’s presence quiet and familiar beside him.

“I wonder where Noah is now,” Ronan said. “He told me that he's not really anywhere when he's gone, but I don't know what that means.”

Adam crossed his arms loosely over his still heaving chest. “He used to tell me all the time that he'd be at a party, or on a trip, or whatever. But I guess he was always lying.”

Ronan laughed. Adam looked over to see him grinning. “You know he was telling the truth at least once,” he said. “About that frat party. When he crashed the car.” 

Adam laughed, too. He could see the night sky reflecting in Ronan’s blue eyes, stars and comets, planets and galaxies. There was a smear of grease on his forehead. He looked extremely boyish. And so very alive.

“I never heard the rest of that story,” Adam told Ronan. He shifted onto his side to face him.

Ronan mirrored him. He pillowed his head on his arm. “There isn't much of a story to tell. Noah stole the car, crashed it like five seconds later, and disappeared.”

“Disappeared disappeared or ran away disappeared?” Adam asked.

Ronan laughed again. “Shit,” he said. “I don't know.” He rolled back onto his back and stared up at the sky. The wry twist to his mouth turned bitter. “He never got caught. I guess that's one perk of being dead.”

Adam turned onto his back, too. He was quiet for a moment, then, “We need to go in,” he said.

“Let's just wait for a while,” Ronan replied.

So they waited for a while.

“Come on,” Adam said sometime later, when the sky had gone from blue to black. “It’s getting late.”

“So?” Ronan said.

“So we need to study,” Adam said. “And talk about Kavinsky.”

“Right,” Ronan said. “Kavinsky.”

They went inside.

+

Adam went to Ronan’s room alone.

He knew that Ronan’s room was a private and sacred place, a place that was not to be visited without permission, but Ronan was talking with Gansey about Kavinsky in the living room. Adam hadn't been invited to that conversation, and he felt that it definitely wasn't his place to intrude on it. He didn't know enough about Kavinsky to be any help, anyways.

_Kavinsky._  Adam couldn't get his face out of his head. Not his crazed eyes, nor his bloody lip. Not the way he'd looked when Gansey said Ronan’s name.

Adam sat down on Ronan’s bed. They didn't have any homework - not that Ronan realized - but Adam had come over to study anyways. He wanted something normal. He ran his hand over Ronan’s soft, homey quilt, his rumpled cotton pillow. If he laid down, he knew he would smell gasoline and aftershave. And maybe name-brand laundry detergent.

Chainsaw croaked in her cage. Adam looked up at her. She was so like Ronan, he thought. All claws and beak, designed like a weapon but soft on the inside. Loving towards Ronan and all his friends, delighted by the smallest, simplest things.

Adam looked around the room. He’d never been in here alone before, and so he had never been able to shamelessly catalogue everything he saw.

He didn't know what he would have expected a few weeks ago, but it was not this. All over Ronan’s room hung and stood and propped records of happiness and belonging: a picture of Gansey was taped to the wall, a framed photo of three smiling brothers splashing in a lake sat on the dresser. Stacked against the wall were books on Glendower, books on Latin, books on  _Caring for and Training your New Bird._

There was no flat-screen TV, no surround sound speakers, nothing unnecessary or without meaning. It was simple. Small. It looked almost like Adam’s room had, back at home.

_That wasn't your home_ , he immediately thought, but he couldn't take it back. Maybe he would never completely leave that trailer behind. Maybe he'd never forget. And that was okay.

Adam heard floorboards creak, and a second later Ronan was closing the door and sitting beside him on the bed.

“We don't have any homework,” Ronan said. “I pay attention sometimes, you know.”

Adam smiled. “I thought you could use the studying, anyway.”

“Asshole,” Ronan said. He dropped something into Adam’s hands. “Here.”

Adam looked down. It was a pair of glasses.

“For your headaches,” Ronan said. He sounded defensive. “They were just laying around the apartment. I was gonna throw them out anyways. I thought they might help.”

Adam considered them. They looked a little like Gansey’s wire frames, only they were rounder and made of deep brown plastic instead of metal. Adam ran his finger along the smooth outer edge. Then he looked up from his lap and considered Ronan as well.

Ronan gazed back at him, his face soft, mouth open. His eyes dropped to Adam’s mouth, and Adam thought,  _he's going to kiss me._  He shifted, a catalytic movement, towards Ronan. He watched the apple of Ronan’s throat bob as he swallowed. “Ronan,” he said.

Ronan let out a quiet breath. He took the glasses from Adam and set them on the bedside table. Then he turned to face Adam completely and leaned in.

It happened in snapshots: their lips touched, the bed creaked, their knees knocked against one another.

Adam did not react immediately and neither did Ronan. Their lips pressed together, unmoving, breaths held. Then Adam closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and slid a hand up to cup the nape of Ronan’s neck. Ronan’s hands came up to hold his hip, his jaw. And he started kissing Adam, and kissing him, really kissing him. And Adam kissed him back, overwhelmed with this closeness, with how  _good_  it felt. There was a dam breaking inside him.

He breathed Ronan in, focused on the feeling of his lips and body heat. It was a little fascinating how hot Ronan was. It was a little fascinating how unsteady he was making Adam feel.

Adam didn't know how much time had passed. It could have been seconds, could have been minutes, could have been days. He didn't know how long. But he knew he didn't want to stop.

+

Before tonight, before Adam, the only person Ronan had ever kissed was Gansey, and even then it had been a drunken experiment.

Kissing Adam was not like kissing Gansey. It was not like anything else at all. His hands were careful instead of heavy, his breath all heat instead of mint. He cupped Ronan's face in his palm and slipped his tongue into his mouth. Kissing Adam was not playing. This was not something to be laughed off in the morning.

Adam pulled Ronan closer, and Ronan let him. He pushed Adam’s shirt up to feel his bare skin. He opened his mouth to Adam’s meticulous ministrations. He let Adam take him apart, down to the last barrier, to the last atom. Adam meant to tear him down until there was no barbed wire left, and Ronan wanted him to.

Gansey's voice called from the living room: “Ronan! Adam! Time to go!”

Adam jumped away from Ronan. But he didn't look away. He stared at Ronan like he was a particularly challenging math problem.

Ronan closed his eyes. He could barely breathe; he could barely think.

“We need to go to Blue’s,” he said. “For you to scry.” He got up and walked out of the room.

+

Adam watched Ronan walk away from him and out of the room, partly because he wanted to, and partly because he didn't trust himself to stand yet.

Ronan had kissed him.  _And he’d kissed Ronan back._

Something trilled in his chest; it was fast and flighty like anxiety or fear, but too light - and too bright - to be either of those things. He grabbed his new glasses and got to his feet. Chainsaw cawed at him softly from her cage.

Happiness, Adam realized. It was happiness.

He walked out into the living room, where Gansey and Ronan waited. Gansey looked up from his journal, anxious. Ronan’s eyes went to Adam and stayed.

“You ready?” Gansey asked unnecessarily, his unease palpable. None of them were ready. You couldn't prepare for something you didn't understand. They all kept looking up at the ceiling and in the corners of the room - expecting Noah to appear - when they thought the others weren't looking.

Ronan’s looked at Gansey. “Let’s go fuck with some magic,” he said.

Gansey nodded seriously. He took the Camaro’s keys from his pocket. “Let’s,” he agreed.

+

Blue’s apartment was nestled between many others on the edge of the nearby community college.

Gansey parked the Pig beside a very shiny Fisker that looked like it'd come straight from the factory.  Ronan ran his finger along its sleek side as they walked to the door.

“Not a scratch on it,” Gansey commented.

“Waste,” Ronan said.

They all stepped onto the tiny concrete porch. Gansey knocked.

An unfamiliar voice called, “Coming!”

Adam heard Blue say, “I'll get it. I’ll-  _Henry, I’ll get it_.” There was a very audible scuffle, and then the door swung open and they were greeted by Blue’s handsome and smiling roommate.

“Hello hello, fellow college students! Welcome to the Blue-Cheng household.” Henry said, bowing Gansey in. He straightened when Ronan walked past him. Adam couldn't see Ronan’s face, but he could reasonably assume it was making an unkind expression.

Ronan. Adam felt his face heat up. He couldn't think about Ronan right now.

“So,” Henry said, shaking Gansey’s hand and blocking Blue from him simultaneously. “Are we communing with the dead or what?”

“We’re scrying,” Blue said, flatly like she'd already said it many times. “Not using a ouija board.”

Henry shrugged and released Gansey’s hand. His smile was very bright. “Either way it creeps me out. I’ll just watch.”

Adam watched all of this from the door. He could see that Henry was a very handsome boy, the kind of handsome that did not have to be spoken aloud or pointed out to be acknowledged. He could see Gansey noticing this, and he could see Ronan noticing Gansey noticing, and becoming angry about it.

“ _Okay,_ ” Blue said, stepping in front of Henry. Henry smiled still at Gansey over her head. “I already set everything up. Let’s go over it one more time before we actually do it.”

They all went to the living room, except for Henry, who sat in the kitchen with a large bag of potato chips. The coffee table had been pushed aside, and an old-fashioned TV, the kind with wire antenna, sat in the middle of the tan carpet.

Blue noticed Ronan’s sharp attention on it. “I assumed you'd forget the juice,” she told him.

Ronan shrugged, unoffended. “I did.”

“It's fine,” Blue said. She knelt down to plug the TV into the wall. “This works just as well. And there's no chance of staining the carpet.”

They all crowded around the TV.  Adam sat in front of it, and Blue sat to his left. After a moment's hesitation, Ronan sat at his other side, with Gansey following.

“Ronan will ground you,” Blue said, uncertainly. She bit at her lip and looked up at Ronan. “Are you sure you know how to do it?” she asked. “Since you're not connected to the ley line, and you can't-”

“Ronan can do it,” Gansey said. “I know he can.”

“Okay,” Blue said. “Alright. Adam, turn the TV on.”

Adam stared at his reflection in the blank screen for a moment. He felt very acutely that he had changed since meeting Noah, Gansey, Ronan, and Blue. There were so many versions of him, each more or less confused and jumbled than the last. The Adam he was a few weeks ago would have been frightened. The Adam he was now felt Blue’s energy, and Ronan’s closeness, and Gansey’s eager faith.

Adam turned the TV on.

Static erupted onto the screen; the buzz of it filled the room.

Blue put her hand in his. Adam gripped it back. There was no fear in him.

He stared into the static. He stared, and he stared, and everything faded away, or rushed away, and then there was eleven-year-old Adam, still wearing his spider-man pajamas at breakfast, tracing trenches into his oatmeal while his mother did the dishes.

He was sitting on the edge of his chair as he often did, so that if his father came in fuming he could more quickly move out of the way. Adam watched his mother, and he watched his younger self, and then he pushed closer until he was above his younger self, and then inside him. The metal spoon was warm in his hand, and the rough, unfinished wood of the table cut into his elbow. His throat was scratched with a cold. Again he dug through his oatmeal, and a small amount of that old fear threatened to grow back into him.

He remembered that this was not his true self. That his physical body was back at Blue’s apartment, Blue’s hand tight in his, and Ronan close by.

“ _No. You're here, with us,_ ” a voice whispered in Adam’s deaf ear. It was high and fluting, inhuman. A shiver went up Adam’s spine. The voice added, “ _And he's here, too. Because of you, we almost have him._ ”

Adam looked around. He was back in the double-wide, only now he was older, and alone, and the oatmeal was cold. “ _Do it, Adam,_ ” Noah’s voice whispered. “ _Please._ ”

Adam looked down at the oatmeal in front of him. It was sticky and thick, barely caving in under the weight of the spoon. He dug a small, circular depression into the middle of it. He waited to see if it would fill in on itself, but it did not. He dug a larger one around the perimeter of the bowl, and connected the two. Then he dug another small one, and another, connecting them all in ways that made sense but didn't at the same time.

He dug into the larger trench. “ _Stop that,_ ” the faeries whispered. He pulled his spoon through it, every instinct in him telling him to destroy it.

A door slammed shut behind him.  _My father,_  he thought. But he wasn't scared.

“ _Hurry,_ ” Noah whispered.

Adam destroyed the largest trench. All of the others collapsed, a chain reaction, and Adam dove into the darkness they left behind.

He was yanked back into Blue’s apartment, his deaf ear still ringing. The TV’s cord had been unplugged. His reflection stared at him out of the black screen.

Adam said, “God.”

“Jesus,” Gansey said, relieved. “Christ.”

“Don't pull that shit again,” Ronan said, his voice angry. Without Adam noticing, Ronan had grabbed his arm and was holding on tight, his fingers warm and distracting even through the cotton of Adam’s shirt.

“What did you see?” Blue asked him.

Adam cleared his throat. He felt like he'd swallowed dust. Like his brain had been run over. “They're not trying to take the line,” he said. “They're trying to take Noah.”

“They who?” Blue asked. “What do you mean?”

“The faeries,” Adam said. “It's been them this whole time.”

“Did you see them?” asked Gansey.

“No,” Adam said. “But they always talk in my deaf ear, so I know it's them.”

“You're deaf in one ear?”

“My father-” Adam said, and stopped. He wanted to be truthful. He didn't want to be ashamed anymore. He couldn't make himself meet Gansey’s eyes. He lifted a hand to cover his left ear. “I can't hear out of this ear. But they whisper in it. And Noah, too, I think. But he sounds different.”

“They're trying to take Noah,” Gansey said, his voice quiet. He didn't want it to be real.

“They were talking about him that day,” Ronan said suddenly. He looked at Gansey. “‘ _Your dead friend_ ’. They meant Noah, not Glendower.”

Gansey put his head in his hands, overwhelmed. “What do they want with him?”

At that moment, a door in the hallway creaked as it was pushed open. Noah stepped out. He closed the door behind him. He walked over to the living room and sat down in the empty space next to Blue.

“Hey, guys,” he said softly.

“Noah!” Blue said, and threw her arms around him. He immediately became more solid and real.

Noah looked very startled but also pleased at the fact of Blue clinging to him. Once Blue released him - her, looking embarrassed, and him, looking like he'd won the lottery - he reached over to rub his thumb across one of her eyebrows.

"Are they acting all crazy again?" Blue asked.

"No, just the one," Noah told her.

“Did he just come from the _bathroom_?!” Henry cried.

Adam was grateful for Noah’s appearance, partly because he had missed him, and partly because it diverted the others attention from him while he calmed down.

He watched Noah and the others for a while, letting them talk and laugh, letting them enjoy each other's company. He could feel his heartbeat - the life of the ley line - in his teeth. And his deaf ear was still ringing.

“Noah,” Adam said, and they all turned to look at him. “It’s the faeries hurting you, isn't it? Not Kavinsky.”

Noah's face fell. He looked more like a ghost than ever, more like a ghost than Adam thought he could bear. “I think,” he said, his voice sad. Blue held her hand out to him, and he took it.

“What do they want with you?” Gansey asked, his voice terribly gentle.

“They want my energy,” Noah said, his shoulders creeping up and in on themselves. “How I’m able to be…  _here_.”

They were trying their best to tiptoe around the fact of Noah’s fickle existence, but Ronan did not have the constitution for that. “What are they doing to you?” he demanded. “How can we make it stop?”

“I don't know,” Noah said. “How they do it. I… I'm sorry, I can't remember any of it.”

Gansey drew himself up. “Look,” he said, and they all turned to him like flowers to the sun. “Now we know the faeries want Noah, and not the line, but this doesn't change anything. We all agreed that finding Glendower would fix the line. We can still ask him to save Noah; we just need to adjust our favor a little.”

Gansey’s eyes flickered between them all, unflinching, and Adam felt Blue and Ronan relax on either side of him.

Gansey lifted his chin. He was sure because they weren't, brave because they needed him to be. But Adam did not think it was enough.

Glendower was safe. He was Gansey's trusted, optimal self. His knight in centuries-weathered armor. But it wasn't enough to hope they'd find him in time. It wasn't enough to believe he'd help Noah. He wouldn't be enough.

Adam had seen the faeries, listened to their wants. He’d felt their power, thousands of years of it, all at once.

He could feel how badly they wanted Noah. What a gift they thought it was to exist in the human world but not as a human. He knew they would not let him go so easily.

There was a plan forming in his mind - a solution - just on the edge of his consciousness. It was all magic, all ancient connections, the collapse and decomposition of things made to last forever.

Some of Adam was still scrying, having not completely come back yet. He could see Glendower, or the shape of Glendower, far down on the line; dead, decomposed, nonexistent. Past the possibility of granting a favor.

The faeries whispered in his ear:  _“We collect dead things._ ” A glimpse of Noah’s face flashed in his mind. “ _And he's one of them._ ”

+

Adam, Ronan, Gansey and Noah said goodnight to Blue, received enthusiastic handshakes from Henry, and stepped outside of the apartment. Gansey started the Camaro and got them on the road. Noah disappeared shortly after.

Because Adam had left his bike at Gansey and Ronan’s, Gansey was not the one to drive him home. He retrieved his bike, watched silently as Ronan bullied Gansey into going to bed early for once, then allowed Ronan to shove it into the BMW.

Gansey caught the passenger side door as Adam was pulling it shut. “Adam,” he said. “If you're interested, the interview for that law firm I told you about is tomorrow. Late afternoon.”

Adam nodded. “Okay.”

Gansey didn't push. He just smiled and let the door fall shut.

Ronan pulled the BMW slowly out of the driveway. It was late, and Adam was grateful that he didn't have to bike home. He stole glances at Ronan; he was also grateful that Ronan was driving and was therefore was unlikely to notice.

“Do you have anything to wear?” Ronan asked. “To the interview.”

“No,” Adam said. “Not really.”

“You can borrow something of Gansey’s. I can bring it to you after church.”

“Church?”

Ronan smiled good-naturedly. “Every goddamned Sunday.”

Adam grinned, turned his face away, then changed his mind and turned to look at Ronan fully. Ronan rolled his eyes. Adam laughed.  _God._  He was thinking about kissing Ronan again.

A small smile tugged at the corner of Ronan’s mouth, and for a moment Adam wondered if they were somehow still connected from scrying, if Ronan was reading his thoughts.

They were both quiet for the rest of the ride back to campus, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Adam sorted through Ronan’s CD’s. He put his glasses on. He watched the traffic lights turn yellow and red and green. He reached across the console for Ronan’s hand and held it in his own.

Ronan parked the BMW outside Adam’s dorm and killed the engine; Adam had to let go of his hand so that he could.

“I'll get your bike,” Ronan said.

They both got out of the car.

Ronan wasn't expecting it when Adam met him at the back of the car and grabbed his hand again, and this time Adam was not hesitant. He pulled Ronan in and Ronan let him.

This kiss was slower but just as clumsy, just as sweet. Adam steadied himself against Ronan’s chest. Ronan braced a hand against the BMW, over Adam’s shoulder. Adam could feel Ronan’s body heat radiating in the few inches between them.

Adam ran out of breath very quickly; he didn't understand yet how to breathe while kissing. Getting so excited that he got dizzy did not help, either.

He lingered in the space just in front of Ronan’s mouth for a moment while he caught his breath, stilled his knees, rearranged his thoughts. He let go of Ronan’s hand; both of their palms were sweaty.

Ronan stared at him. There was a crazy sort of smile on his face. Adam couldn't help smiling back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and turned for the dorm building.

+

Gansey was very much awake when Ronan got home.

“I couldn't sleep, of course,” he said, before the door had even closed behind Ronan. He was sitting at the kitchen counter, paging idly through his journal, his wireframes low on his nose. Carefully, he added, “So I went for a car ride with Jane.”

Ronan kicked off his boots. They went flying to opposite sides of the apartment and made satisfying noises as they crashed into and knocked over many things. “Jane?”

“Blue,” Gansey amended. “Henry went with us as well.”

“ _Henry,_ ” said Ronan.

Gansey’s mouth frowned, but his eyes were smiling. “Stop that,” he said.

Ronan went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. He climbed onto the counter and arranged himself comfortably in front of Gansey. He used his teeth to get the cap off; Gansey made a disapproving sound.

Ronan pretended not to understand the disapproving sound. “You want one?”

“I’m good,” Gansey replied. He shook his head, making his glasses clatter to the counter, and rubbed his hands through his hair and then over his eyes.

Ronan watched him. He kept thinking he must look different, that something about him on the outside must have changed since kissing Adam, but Gansey didn't say anything. Ronan pulled lightly at the worn bands around his wrist. “I kissed Adam,” he said.

Gansey lowered his hands from his face. “What?”

“I kissed him,” Ronan said. “Earlier. Before we went to Blue’s. And again by the car.”

Gansey made a noise that sounded both excited and panicked. “ _What?_ ” he said again.

“Please be more eloquent,” Ronan said.

“Christ,” Gansey recovered. “How was it?”

Ronan grinned. “It was great.”

Gansey closed his journal to give Ronan his full attention. “Are you guys going to date now?”

“Fuck, Gansey,” Ronan said, feeling himself flush. “I don't know.”

Gansey grinned. “Do you want to date him?”

Ronan threw the bottle cap at him. “Fuck off.” Gansey laughed, and was quiet. He watched Ronan, obviously waiting for him to say something.

Ronan ignored Gansey for as long as it took him to finish his beer. Then he put it down and looked straight at him. “I want to take him to the Barns. I want to tell him about me.”

Gansey’s giddiness disappeared and he ran his thumb along his lower lip. Ronan could almost see the cogs in his mind turning, trying to find a way to delicately put what he wanted to say so he did not sound like he was talking to an impulsive child.

“Ronan,” he started.

“You brought him with you to see K,” Ronan snapped before Gansey could say anything. “He could have found out then. He might have anyways, he's so fucking smart.”

“He doesn't know,” Gansey said. “And I took him instead of you because I can't trust you around Kavinsky.”

So many memories flashed forward at those words: fast cars, fireworks, red pills, ignored homework and failing grades, Gansey’s worried expression. But that had been at Aglionby, when the weight of his father's death and mother's unanimated existence and Declan’s glare and Mathews dependency had kept him from breathing, had made it so he could only breathe when he was with Kavinsky, racing Kavinsky, fighting Kavinsky. It felt like forever ago. Ronan no longer wanted to go back to it.

“I trust myself around him,” Ronan said. He slid off the counter. He'd go to see K himself. He’d get him to tell him every single detail of what was wrong with Noah, the faeries, the ley line.

“Ronan,” said Gansey, his chair scraping backwards as he stood. “He already told us everything that might be useful.”

Ronan clenched his hands into fists at his sides. But he didn't move. “What Kavinsky said, about my dreams being messed up by the faeries. He wasn't lying. I've been less…. present in them. I don't remember them when I wake up. I thought it was because we're far from home, or something.”

Gansey's expression darkened. “You should have told me,” he said.

“You couldn't have done anything.” Ronan turned away from the door and faced the wall. He thought about punching it, about his knuckles biting into paint and then plaster, about the dirty satisfaction that came with the pain. But he also thought about Gansey's disappointed face, about hiring someone to fix it or buying the materials to inadequately do it themselves, about Adam’s disappointed sigh when he heard what Ronan had done.

Ronan put his hand in his pockets and felt his keys. He thought about growling engines and more adrenaline than he knew what to do with. He thought about Kavinsky’s nasty smile. “I can't just stay here, Gansey,” he said, desperate.

“Where do you want to go?” Gansey asked. His tone was not playful. “Tell me.”

“Kavinsky,” said Ronan. “Adam.”

“Get Chainsaw,” said Gansey. “We’re going for a ride.”

+

They got into the Camaro because, when it was Gansey, it was always the Camaro. Gansey drove because, when it was the Camaro, Gansey always drove. Ronan held Chainsaw in his lap and looked out the window as Gansey got them on the road.

They drove to the outskirts of town. Gansey punched the gas and the Pig’s roar almost drowned out Ronan's gleeful shout.

Ronan thought Gansey might be feeling wild enough to streetrace, and Ronan thought right. They sped out to the drag strip, won race after race against shiny car after shiny car without so much as looking at Kavinsky.

Gansey leaned over the wheel, his eyes as bright as the stars, as hungry as a wild animal. The car racing alongside them shuddered and fell away, and the Camaro kept going. Gansey shifted into the fourth gear and let out a crazed howl, and Ronan leaned across the seat divider to more properly revel in his excitement.

This was the real Gansey. This was Gansey the boy. Gansey on fire. This was the Gansey that bought the Camaro, the Gansey that befriended foreign professors, the Gansey that stayed up at night after he'd gotten a new lead because  _maybe this time, maybe this is it._  This was the Gansey that had punched Declan on Ronan’s sixteenth birthday and had consequently gotten both his thumb and nose broken.

Seeing this Gansey in the flesh, outside of Ronan's dreams or memories, living and breathing and full of light, knocked Ronan’s pulse askew.

Gansey shouted something over the roar of the Camaro’s engine.

“What?” Ronan shouted back.

Chainsaw croaked at the both of them and flapped up to balance on the dashboard. She crouched under the curved glass windshield and turned her head to the road.

Gansey slowed the Camaro. The turning signal ticked into the sudden quiet as he did a U-turn back towards town.

“Snacks,” he said. “And then we sleep.”

+

They bought snacks, and fast food, and insensible and materialistic things from the dollar store, and the clerk sent Ronan nasty looks about the bird he carried but said nothing, and when they got home they did not sleep.

Ronan kicked off his shoes as he walked across the living room, Chainsaw balancing precariously on his shoulder. He dropped their grocery bags next to the TV and sat down on the floor in front of it.

Gansey collapsed next to Ronan in a heap of keyed-up exhaustion. “Mario Kart?” he asked.

Ronan nodded. He grabbed the plastic bag in front of him and dumped out its contents: potato chips, ice cream, a rubber snake, a bag of peanuts for Chainsaw. Chainsaw hopped down from his shoulder at the commotion and chirped happily. Ronan tore the bag open for her and she scattered peanuts across the floor.

He handed Gansey a pint of ice cream.

“Spoons?” Gansey asked.

They looked at the kitchen. They looked at each other.

“I guess fingers work just as well,” Gansey said tiredly. He handed Ronan a controller.

They picked their characters. Ronan stole some of Gansey’s ice cream, but most of it didn't make its way to his mouth. Chainsaw hopped onto Gansey’s knee and tried her best to pick it up.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, snacks spread out in front of them, the clock ticking into the early hours of the morning, Ronan felt like he was twelve again. There had been so many nights with Gansey just like this. So many night like this in D.C., at Monmouth, at the Barns.

After some time, when Ronan got too tired, too full of the longing for home and nostalgia for what they had been, he set his controller down and leaned his head on Gansey’s shoulder.

Gansey pulled a quilt from the couch behind them and set it over Ronan’s shoulders, as slowly and gently as he could. Ronan snorted. “I’m still awake,” he said.

“I know,” Gansey replied. “But you should get some sleep.”

Ronan closed his eyes.

+

That night, Ronan dreamt.

The details came to him in slow fits of clarity: his own hands digging into his thighs; the sound of vinyl creaking; the scent of forest and gasoline coming in through the open windows; the coolness of Adam’s breath on the back of his neck.

There was an intense and wonderful heat in his gut. The wheel of the BMW pressed hard into his forehead. Adam leaned over the gearshift to trace the tattoo on his back.

_Did it hurt?_  Adam asked. His finger was callused and impressionable on Ronan’s spine.  _No? What about the one I gave you?_

Ronan opened his mouth to answer but no sound came out. His entire world narrowed to the one point of contact between him and Adam. He couldn't focus on anything else. He wanted this moment to swallow him whole.

Adam pressed his whole palm to Ronan’s back and Ronan gasped with need. Then Adam’s hand was gone, and then Adam was closer, much closer. He curled over Ronan. He pressed him back into the driver’s seat. He pressed their bare chests together.

Ronan knew he was dreaming, even as he forgot he was. Adam was so much more real here than Ronan had ever been in reality.

_Well, if you're not going to say anything,_  Adam said, and he pushed his fingers into Ronan’s mouth. They were hot and long and curled against his tongue. They tasted like ink. Ronan wrapped his hand around Adam’s wrist until he was hard against him, all of the way inside of him. Until there was no going back.

+

Ronan woke with a start, gasping quietly into the dark living room. Gansey slept beside him, the glow from the TV illuminating him, his glasses slid back to his forehead, an arm thrown under his head.

Chainsaw perched on the game center across from them, having woken up when Ronan did. Ronan reached over to smooth her ruffled feathers.

Slowly, he let himself think about Adam. He waited for the shame to come, and it did, but it wasn't so much that it choked him. It wasn't the same shame he’d felt when he used to dream of Kavinsky, only a year ago.

Maybe a beautiful boy like Adam couldn't be related to anything ugly. Lately Ronan had been having nothing but nightmares. There couldn't be any shame in dreaming of someone good.

He reached over and took Gansey’s glasses to prevent him from crushing them. He set them down beside Chainsaw, stroked her once, then curled up on the floor again and closed his eyes.


	9. amongst other unsurities

The next morning Ronan raced down highway I-90 in the BMW, the windows down, radio blasting, his cuffed and pressed sleeves pushed up to the elbow, his tie discarded to lie forgotten in the backseat until next Sunday. 

Church had been long, made longer by Declan’s asshole-ism but somewhat more tolerable by Matthew’s taming presence. Ronan hadn't been able to sit still. 

The BMW growled and shuddered under him, and he let it. He was on his way to get Adam. God, he felt good. Everything felt so good. He would never want for another life again. 

Adam was waiting for him in the Starbucks parking lot away from the crowded campus, always insistent on not being an inconvenience. Ronan pulled up beside him and parked. He could see Adam’s face through the window. His pulse sped up. Adam knocked once on the hood of the car before opening the door and getting in. 

Ronan grinned at him. “Parrish,” he said. 

Adam looked at Ronan, and then at his outfit. The corner of his mouth turned upwards. “Lynch,” he replied. 

Ronan backed out of the parking lot and got them on the road. “Gansey laid out all his suits for you.”

Adam ran his hand along the seam of his pants. “I hope one will fit.” 

Gansey was confident that one would, and he had already told Adam this. Ronan decided it was best to not acknowledge Adam’s nerves. 

He tried to be quiet, but being quiet let him think too much about too many things. Just last night he had been kissing Adam, and today neither of them were talking about it. He didn't have much experience with these things, but he knew enough from Gansey that this was usually how they went until one party gathered up enough courage to discuss the occurrence with the other. 

“I have a theory,” Adam said, his voice hesitant, “about fixing the ley line.”

Ronan looked at him. “About Glendower?”

“No,” Adam said. His hands were loosely joined in his lap and his gaze was steady on the road in front of them. “It doesn't involve Glendower at all.”

This was not what Ronan had expected. “I’m guessing you haven't told Gansey,” he said.

“I haven't,” Adam admitted. 

“Well, magician,” Ronan said haughtily. “Lay it on me.”

“I think,” Adam said, slowly like he was considering each word, “the only way to save the line is to kill the faeries’ source of power.”

“The line  _ is  _ their source of power.” 

“No, it isn't. The line is just another thing they want to control. All of their power comes from the ring.”

“So we go kick over a few mushrooms,” Ronan said, “and the problems fixed?”

“No, Ronan,” Adam said, in the same tone he would've said “no, asshole”. He pulled a piece of paper out from his pocket and unfolded it. There was an illustration on it. Ronan dashed looks at it out of the corner of his eye; Adam had drawn a perfect circle, surrounded by a much larger perfect circle. 

“Shapes,” Ronan said, feigning excitement, and Adam frowned. 

“When I was scrying,” Adam said, “I saw a lot of things that connected and fell apart, and I didn't understand what it meant until I went to the library and looked up more about faeries.” 

They had reached the apartment. Ronan parked but neither of them left the car. Gansey was waiting inside. 

Adam put the piece of paper on the dash where they both could see it. He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face Ronan, his expression suddenly intense. 

“There's another ring,” he said. “I don't know where it is yet, but I know it's huge. Thousands of miles long.” His eyes were fervent on Ronan’s. “It goes around more faerie rings than the one we know - it connects them all.”

“So we break this giant ring,” Ronan said. 

“And the faeries lose all their power,” Adam finished.

“Okay, Einstein,” Ronan said, too impressed to make the name sound offensive, “how do we find this big ring?”

“I don't know,” Adam said. His eyes flicked towards the apartment. “Gansey’s coming.” 

Ronan did not move. He could tell Adam had more to say and was struggling to. “Spit it out,” he said.

“I don't want Gansey to know yet,” Adam said. 

Ronan put his hand on the door. “I won't lie to him,” he said. 

“It isn't lying,” said Adam hastily. “I just- I don't know if I’m right. I don't want to tell him that Glendower isn't the answer until I know for sure.” 

Ronan looked at him. “When will you know for sure?” 

Adam stared back. “When you and I break the biggest ring.”

“Fine,” Ronan said. Gansey waved at them from the door. “Come on.”

 

+

 

Adam could not stop messing with the sleeves of Gansey’s suit jacket.

He didn’t fidget for a lack of comfort. The suit fit him as perfectly as if it were tailored specially for him. The expensive silk of the button up shirt underneath was cool against his skin and the tie around his neck snugly and formally held him together. His new glasses fit perfectly on the bridge of his nose. 

He did not suffer from any lack of physical comfort, but his fragile pride, formerly pushed away, had begun to rear its ugly head ever since he’d gotten dressed in Gansey and Ronan’s cramped bathroom. 

_ Come on, Adam,  _ Gansey had said through the door, as Adam stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He'd felt sick. Ronan had said something outside the door that Gansey had scolded him for, and Adam had tried not to listen. Putting on Gansey’s clothes had felt too much like he was giving a part of himself away and stepping into Gansey’s skin instead. 

“It'll be fine,” Gansey was saying now, his voice light and reassuring.

Adam hated how obvious his nerves were. He wanted - no, he  _ needed -  _ this internship. Badly. He was trying hard to not think of the possibilities: exchanging his TA job for much needed sleep; only going to the parlor for apprenticing, and having enough money to not need to go for any other reason; enjoying his summer hours away from the bustle of campus in a modestly wealthy apartment. 

Called in by a favor from Gansey’s father, two lawyers in expensive suits would soon be waiting for him in the nearby Starbucks. They were almost there. Adam had to talk about something else. Anything else. 

“What if,” Adam said, “Glendower isn't what you think he is?”

Gansey was quiet for a moment. “Do you mean to say that you think he isn't alive?” 

“Even if he is,” Adam said, “What if he isn't powerful enough to save Noah?” 

Gansey tapped his fingers on the Camaro’s wheel, pensive. “He is. I know he is.”

Adam looked at him. Gansey did not  _ think _ Glendower would be enough, he  _ knew.  _ He knew without hearing the line, without scrying, without being a ghost. He had more faith than any of them without having even the smallest bit of definite proof. 

This unwavering faith made Adam’s chest warm with something like admiration. It also gave him a headache. 

“You can't know that,” he said, not unkindly. “You don't know for sure where he is, or if he's even alive. There's no solid evidence.” 

Gansey took a deep breath. He did not look at Adam. “I know he's alive because I’m alive.”

Adam waited for Gansey to explain. His eyes were big with excitement as they always were when he was about to tell a story, but something in his face was unhappy as well. Adam felt suddenly uneasy. 

“I’m allergic to bees. Badly.” Gansey said to the road. “When I was four I went to the hospital for one sting, and of course after that first sting it only gets worse.”

Adam thought of how often Gansey ventured outside, not only straying from the path but poking at and messing around with things as well. “Do you carry an EpiPen?” he asked. 

“No point,” Gansey said, his tone flippant and impersonal in the way it had been when Adam had first met him. “The chances of me surviving even one sting are very low.” 

“Okay,” Adam said. “Go on.” 

Gansey sighed. “When I was nine or ten I attended a dinner party with my parents. A fancy one, with finger-foods and expensive champagne. All of the adults were discussing politics and I was bored out of my mind. Some kids asked me if I wanted to play hide-and-seek, and I said yes because I had nothing better to do. There was a forest at the edge of the backyard. It was huge, with trees wider than I would be able to fit my arms around even now. I went in and I loved it. I couldn't see the house, and I knew no one could see me. I was triumphant.” 

Gansey's voice was peculiarly even. He continued in a monotone, “I stepped on a hornets nest, and at first I didn't realize. At first I thought I was being pricked by a thorn, because it didn't hurt very much. But then there were more. Up my legs, on my arms. By the time I looked down I couldn't see my skin. I knew I was dead.” 

Adam clutched at his own arms, imagining that there were deadly insects covering them. He felt like he was there with Gansey,  _ as  _ Gansey, all those years ago in the woods. The reality of the story, the weight to its message, made him feel that the time he was in now was not so significant compared to others that had already passed. 

Adam cleared his throat. “Did you try to get help?” he asked. 

Gansey shook his head. “There was no point,” he said. “There were hundreds of them. I fell down and felt my heart stop.” 

Now Gansey looked at Adam, for the first time since beginning the story. “Now’s the part that Ronan told me not to tell you. He knew you wouldn't believe me. But now I think you have enough reason and experience to consider it.” Gansey let out a shaky breath. “I heard a voice, Adam. I’ll never forget what it said. It said: _‘You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.’”_

“Glendower saved you,” Adam said. Gansey was right; he couldn't not believe it, not after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, not after hearing the chilling calm of Gansey’s voice. “That's why you're looking for him.”

“I told my sister. I told my parents. They told me it was a hallucination.” The muscle in Gansey’s jaw tightened. “It was not a hallucination.” 

Adam looked away from Gansey as he considered this. He would have dismissed the story right away if it had been someone else telling it. But because it was Gansey, and because of the past few unbelievable weeks, Adam could not simply dismiss it. 

“What if we don't find him in time?” Adam asked. 

“We have to,” Gansey said. “We’ll keep searching along the ley line, and doing whatever else we can to find out more. Blue is going to ask her psychic family members for advice. Ronan is-” Gansey faltered. “Helping me,” he finished lamely. 

Gansey sounded so certain that he was in the right, that there was no other way. Adam thought back to his slowly-forming plan of tracking the ley line activity until he could find the larger ring. He had faith in his plan because he had a basis of scientific proof backing it up: the voices of faeries in his ear, the hundreds of miles long stretch of roots underneath the ground connecting like synapses or electrical wires, the ever-present energy inside him. He wanted to have faith in Gansey's plan, in  _ Gansey,  _ but the only faith he could muster would be from Gansey’s faith itself. 

He could not trust in something so blindly. 

“I want to go back to the faerie ring as soon as possible,” Gansey said, unbothered by Adam’s silence. “We can discuss it in the apartment after this.” The Camaro stuttered to a stop. Gansey unbuckled and gestured grandly to the Starbucks in front of them. “Here we are.” 

Adam's throat closed up for a half second. He busied his hands with unbuckling himself. “You’re coming in with me?”

“Of course,” Gansey said, killing the engine. “This is a very informal meeting.” 

“Okay,” Adam said. “Okay.”

They went inside. 

Gansey first went to the counter and ordered a latte. The barista asked Adam what he wanted. Adam stuck his hand into his pocket. He needed to pick up some extra shifts soon. 

“Plain black coffee, please,” he said. 

Their drinks would be brought to their table, they were assured. Adam paid in exact change and then followed Gansey to a circular table already occupied by a large man in a grey suit and a stern looking woman with long fingers wrapped around a coffee. 

They stood, and nervousness threatened to consume Adam as he was introduced. _Genius,_ he heard Gansey say. _Straight A student._ Adam watched his hand as it shook the man's, and then the woman's. Who was Adam Parrish? He was not a genius. He had no gift, nothing that aided him in where he was trying to get in life. He was here because he was a hard worker, a meticulous perfectionist, someone who knew better than anyone that the only way up was out. A scared little boy that couldn't go for more than an hour without checking the underside of his fingernails for dirt. 

They sat. Gansey said no more, so it was Adam who answered the questions, Adam who told tales of his achievements. He felt ridiculous, like he was bragging, but the looks on the faces of the lawyers opposite him were not ridiculing. They were eager. 

Something in Adam flipped. He realized, with a titling of reality, that they were badly impressed. That they wanted him, more of him, more of his youthfulness and vitality. His drink was brought to the table. He thanked the barista graciously and turned back to the lawyers **.** He felt a strange kind of confidence in him, powerful and encouraging where there had been so little before.

_ The ley line,  _ he thought, and then,  _ no, me.  _

He took a sip of his coffee. He was not sure if there was a difference between the two, and he was not sure if he cared either way. 

Time slipped from Adam as the interview wore on. He didn't feel like much had passed at all when the lawyers thanked him for his time and stood.

They shook hands again. “It was a pleasure,” the woman said. “You'll be hearing from us soon.” 

Adam smiled. “I look forward to it.”

 

+

 

Adam should have more thoroughly thought through the implications of wearing Gansey's suit to the parlor, but there hadn't been enough time between the interview and his shift to stop by the apartment and change.

“Hey, business man,” one of his coworkers said. “What's with the suit?”

Adam tried to smile with humor but could feel very acutely that the outcome fell short. He pulled his tie loose, tucked it into the suit jacket pocket, and tucked both safely away beneath the table. 

After that he could breathe a little easier. 

He worked slowly through his shift. It was an empty day, the hours passing by each other with no ceremony. He was free from class, free from pressing fees and bills, free to think as much as he wanted about Ronan with little consequences. 

Some time later, though, Adam reevaluated his analysis of his consequenceless thoughts, because Ronan stepped through the parlor door just minutes before closing, half-hidden in shadow like an apparition. 

“Hey,” Adam said.

Ronan came up to the counter but not close enough to touch it. He didn't exactly look at Adam. “How was the interview?”

“Good,” Adam said. “I think.”

Ronan tugged at the bracelets on his wrist. “Gansey told me you killed it.” He looked away from Adam and around the parlor. One of Adam's coworkers looked up from a magazine. She quickly averted her gaze when she noticed Ronan’s attention. 

Ronan looked back at Adam. “I need to talk to you.”

Adam tried to read Ronan’s expression for hints of what he wanted to talk about but couldn't definitively discern any. A considerable amount of anxiety started to form in the pit of his stomach. “Okay,” he said. “Talk.” 

Ronan looked around himself again. “Not here,” he said. “In the car.” 

“Are you taking me somewhere?” Adam asked. 

“No,” Ronan said. “Just… I’ll drive you home.”

“My shift ends in a few minutes,” Adam told him. 

Ronan nodded stiffly, his head jerking up like it was moving on rusted hinges. “I’ll wait in the car.” 

Adam could not focus at all for the last few minutes of his shift. Luckily, no clients came in asking for him. He grabbed Gansey’s jacket and tie and left the second his time was up. Ronan peeled out of the lot as soon as Adam closed the car door. 

He waited for Ronan to say something. Ronan did not. There was a tension in the car that kept Adam from speaking first. 

Ronan parked the BMW near Adam’s dorm and killed the engine. 

“I need to tell you something,” he said. 

Adam waited. 

“But not here,” Ronan said. 

This did nothing to ease Adam’s nerves. “Then where?”

“Back home. In Henrietta.” He unbuckled and turned in his seat to face Adam. “Tomorrow. At the Barns.” 

“A trip to Henrietta on a Monday?” 

“There's something there I need to show you.”

Not counting the time actually spent in Henrietta, the trip driving back and forth would take over four hours. Adam wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow, but he'd been planning to go in for some extra money. He'd be missing that, along with studying time and brainstorming how to find the largest faerie ring. 

But Ronan obviously needed to tell him something. Adam knew some of how much Ronan’s home meant to him. He knew Ronan wouldn't ask this of him unless it was important. 

“You'll have to pick me up after my Chemistry class.” Adam said. “A little after eleven.” 

“Okay,” Ronan said. He was still for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he leaned forward over the gearshift to touch Adam’s face. 

Adam startled but leaned into the touch, a newly learned response. Ronan’s palm was cool against his flushed cheek. Adam closed his eyes. 

Ronan kissed him. Just for a few seconds, just for long enough that Adam’s pulse began to trip. Then he released Adam and leaned away.

Adam watched the jut of Ronan’s throat bob as he swallowed. He ran his hands over the wheel, unsteadily, before dropping them to knot together in his lap. “I’ll meet you here,” he said. 

Adam nodded. “Okay.” He left Gansey’s suit jacket and tie on the seat in his place. He didn't look back as he walked into the dorm building, but it wasn't until he reached the door that he heard the BMW slowly peel away.

The dorm was half-alive with activity, which wasn't unusual for a late Sunday night. Adam let himself into his and Noah’s room, quietly, in case Noah was there at all.

All of the lights were off. Warily, Adam flicked one on before closing the door behind himself. He'd been too nervous to eat before the interview. He grabbed a protein bar and went over to his bed. 

Noah was sitting there, his arms tight around Adam’s pillow, chin buried in it. He didn't say anything to Adam as Adam sat down on the bed beside him, mattress creaking faintly. 

“Hey,” Adam said. 

Noah hugged the pillow harder. “Hi, Adam,” he replied. 

Adam unwrapped his protein bar. He looked at Noah. “Do you eat?” he asked.

Noah shook his head. “No.” 

“So you just-” Adam was going to say  _ bought,  _ but he wasn't sure where a ghost would get money. “You got all of this food for me?” 

Noah smiled at him, bashful. Half his face was crushed into the pillow; it looked almost blurred where it rubbed against the fabric. “Yeah,” he said.

It was not charity, Adam knew; it was Noah being his friend. Because that’s what friends did for each other. They communicated with other-worldly beings and gave advice on whether to purchase a new bike and stole nutritional snacks. Something primal and important inside Adam warmed at the thought that Noah cared about him, and that he cared about Noah, too. “Thank you.” he said. 

Noah shrugged. “It's okay.” 

Adam finished his protein bar and pulled his homework out. Noah didn't seem to want to move from the middle of the bed, so Adam moved to the desk. He turned the lamp on and bent it over his notes. 

“You and Ronan are going to fix it without Gansey,” Noah said. 

Adam tried very hard to not be weirded out at the fact that Noah could read his thoughts. “I don't know yet,” he said. “We need to learn more about it.”

“Do you think Gansey will be upset?” Noah asked. 

“I don't think Gansey being upset matters very much when we're looking at the bigger picture."

“He thinks Glendower can help,” Noah said, spelling it out like a little kid would. “And you don't.” 

“I think my plan is surer," Adam said carefully.

“Okay,” Noah said. Adam looked over to see him smiling. “I trust you.”   
  



	10. lay me bare, and now you know

When Adam left the trailer park behind a week before term started, the last thing he would have imagined was returning to Henrietta so soon.

But here they were. Ronan, purposeful and confident behind the wheel of the BMW, calm and focused in a way that made Adam wonderfully content to witness, and Adam, sprawled with the seat leaned back at a relaxed 120 degrees, aimlessly sorting through Ronan’s CD collection as he unsuccessfully thought through his plan to disconnect the faeries from the ley line.

They passed trees and more trees, so fast that Adam could only see a green blur. Ronan had overshot on the highway and taken the wrong exit, and because of this, they did not pass Aglionby. Adam wasn’t sure if it had been an accident. It wasn’t important whether it was, but it was something to think about.

His mind had been reeling since last night, uselessly coming up with theories on what Ronan wanted to tell him and then shooting them down. It had to be very important. It might be what Gansey and Ronan had been keeping from him. It might be the key to all of this.

Adam tried not to let himself dwell on it too much. He thought that if he completely let his mind run wild with Ronan beside him he would start spouting theories and never stop.

Instead, he kept flipping through Ronan’s CD’s. Over and over and over, until suddenly Ronan was slowing the BMW and turning it into a gravel driveway overgrown with forest. Adam put the CD’s down and sat up.

 _The Barns_ , Ronan had called this place. But the reality was not anything like what Adam had imagined.

It was fields. And hills. Hills and hills and hills, rolling and sloshing and stretching on forever in a sea of lush green. Dotted all along them like small sneezes of occupation were run-down barns and then even more run-down barns, held up by leaning trees and propped slats of plywood. Crowded around one of the barns were cows of all colors, half-hidden in the grass, swishing their tails at flies with lazy contempt. It looked like something straight out of a children’s fantasy book. It looked like a home.

Adam was stupidly stunned by the beauty of it.

They came up to a house. It was white, all repaired corners and shabby shutters. It looked comfortably homey and exactly like the place where someone like Ronan Lynch might grow up. Ronan got out of the car and slammed the door behind himself.

“Not here,” he said, when Adam slid out of the car and stepped towards the house. “Not yet.”

“Okay.” Adam let the car door fall shut. Ronan walked around the car and past him to a tree heavily laden with odd fruit. He reached for the lowest hanging branch and plucked two fruits. He shoved one in his mouth and tossed the other one to Adam. Adam caught it between his two palms. It was warm and sticky to the touch.

Adam wasn’t hungry. He put the fruit in his pocket. “What kind of tree is that?”

“Imported,” Ronan said, through a mouthful of juice. “Come on.”

He turned on his heel and led Adam around the house to the largest barn, the only one that seemed to be in any state of use. Its double doors were open, with a few cows loitering between them. Adam and Ronan weaved through the rest of the herd as they made their way up the field.

One cow looked up from its grazing and mooed balefully at Ronan. It was very pretty, with a wide brown face and dull blue eyes. Ronan paused for a second to rub behind its ears. Then he strode through the barn doors, not even looking to see if Adam followed.

Inside, the barn was dark and damp, with the scent of grass and shit and grain in the air. A few cows were inside, but they were not like the others. They slept, some standing, some on the floor, some curled up like cats. They did not look up or stir at all when Ronan and Adam walked by.

Ronan stopped in front of a door that looked like it’d been added to the barn as an afterthought. Adam hadn’t noticed before, but now that Ronan had stopped moving he could see that Ronan was shifty, restless, like Noah on one of his good days but unhappy. He turned away from Adam and put his hand on the knob. “This was my father’s office,” he said.

 _Was_. Adam hadn’t known Ronan’s father was dead.

Ronan opened the door.

The “office” could barely be considered that. It was a very small room, dimly lit by a single light bulb that hung from the low ceiling. There was a cushioned office chair with an old quilt thrown over it pushed up against a desk that looked more like a worktable than anything else; it was covered with so much dust and clutter that Adam couldn’t make himself focus on any of it.

Ronan went over to the table. He picked up what appeared to be a small, clear glass cube. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” he asked, handing it to Adam.

Adam looked at it. It was much heavier than he had expected, and upon closer inspection he saw that it had something inside of it: a flower that bloomed and died, bloomed and died, all while suspended in midair. Adam handed it back to him, confused. “No.”

Ronan grabbed another object from the table. “What about this?”

This one looked more like something you would find in a barn. It was a rusty hammer, and seemed completely normal except for the fact that it was both made of metal and was feather-light and feather-soft to the touch. “I haven’t,” Adam said slowly.

“My dad,” Ronan said, and those two words came out of him so raw that Adam had to look away for a few seconds. “My father, he made these things. Look.” Ronan tried to hand another object to Adam, but Adam wouldn’t take it.

“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked.

Ronan took the flower box and the hammer from Adam. His jaw set as he decided something. He never beat around the bush, Adam knew; he picked up a machete and obliterated it.

He turned away from Adam and braced his hands on the worktable. "I can take things out of my dreams," he said.  
  


Adam must have misheard him. Or Ronan was messing with him. "Things?" he said.

"Lights,” Ronan said, turning around to face Adam. “The fucking glasses. Gansey's car. Chainsaw. Half the cows in that fucking field. Things."  
  


Adam stared at Ronan. Ronan stared back, no amount of humor in his expression. Adam felt, all at once, a tilting vertigo as his brain tried to process this. Ronan, who was plagued by nightmares and insomnia, who refused to let Adam get too close. His pet raven that he'd previously claimed to have found. The strange knickknacks that littered his and Gansey’s apartment: the game controllers that needed no batteries, the generation-old mixtapes and CD’s, the plants that looked nothing like plants were supposed to look and that never needed watering.  
  


The unsureness, the nervous heat in Adam's chest that came with the knowledge of something too big to contain, left him all at once.   
  


"Whatever." Ronan said, already turning away from Adam, always turning away. "It's not that big of a deal."  
  


"No," Adam said, but Ronan was already past him and at the door. "Ronan, stop. It makes sense."  
  


Ronan stopped, his hand crushing on the door knob. "This makes sense to you?" he asked, his tone bristling, all of his defenses up.  
  


Adam, ever the scholar, ever the scientist, felt better now that he knew. It was easy to accept that Ronan was a creature who could do this kind of thing, this impossible thing. It was easier to accept than Gansey's death and rebirth and Noah's ghostliness and the possibility of a king sleeping somewhere underground. Because Ronan wasn’t like other people. He wasn’t like anything else at all.

The more startling part of all this was that Ronan had told him.

"It makes sense," Adam repeated, careful like he was talking to a frightened animal. Ronan merely looked at him, his arms hugging each other over his chest. He raised an eyebrow, waiting.   
  
"It's surprising," Adam said, exasperated. Ronan was expecting him to spit out his reasons for accepting this, and Adam didn't know anything except that he just _did_. "But... it makes sense. I don't know. You're not giving me any time to process this. But I guess I get it."  
  
"You _guess_?" Ronan said.  
  
Adam frowned at him. "Are you just going to keep repeating everything I say to make me feel stupid?"  
  
"Maybe. No," Ronan said, and he laughed, the harshness of it betraying his anxiety.

“I mean,” Adam said, and paused. He was experiencing a mental block that refused to let him arrange his fragmented thoughts into sentences. “It’s makes sense that _you_ can dream things into reality, but the actual dreaming part doesn’t make sense.”

“The fuck?” said Ronan.

Adam pushed his glasses up a little to rub at his eyes. “How does it actually work? Where do you get the things? How are they made? Do you even follow Newton’s third law?”

Ronan shrugged. “It’s connected to the ley line. Or I am. Same difference.”

Adam dropped his hands from his face. “What do you mean?”

Ronan pulled at the leather bands around his wrist. He looked almost self-conscious. “It calls me Greywaren.”

Adam stared at Ronan. _Greywaren_. It did not sound like an ordinary word, or even a word crafted in the language of humans. It sounded ancient, foreign, past the understanding of this time or place in the universe. It sounded magical.

It was the big secret. And it fit Ronan perfectly.

“Show me,” Adam said.

Ronan sighed. Then, pushing the door open into the rest of the barn, he almost smiled. “I knew you’d say that.”

+

Adam followed Ronan up to the front door of the house. He stood off to the side as Ronan flipped over the door mat - it read _Welcome to Our Kingdom_ \- and grabbed a key from underneath it.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit obvious?” Adam asked him.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Ronan said. “The only thing you have to worry about out here is bears.”

Adam shrugged and didn’t reply. What they were about to do felt too big for casual conversation.

Ronan pushed the door open with just enough force that it opened all of the way but didn’t hit the inside wall, like he’d done it before, like he’d done it a million times. He tucked the key back under the mat.

“Come on,” he said, though Adam was already stepping through the door.

The inside of the house looked much less magical, much more ordinary, but it still wasn’t what Adam had expected. Everywhere were things that had obviously lived more than one life, or had at least had a very difficult and damaging first one. A rusted key hook hung on the wall near the door, next to a rack holding dusty jackets and stiff raincoats. An oil painting of a forest hung on the wall opposite, framed by four shoddily nailed together pieces of wood.

“Come on,” Ronan said again, pushing past Adam and up the carpeted stairs, so fast Adam barely saw the kitchen and sitting room except for a few details: chipped, shabby cabinets; an antique vase full of flowers, a calendar, dull metal swords, too many rugs to count rolled up and pushed into a corner, a red rocking chair.

Ronan flicked on the light when he reached the top of the stairs and paused. Adam stopped, too, on the second-to-last step.

Ronan half-turned to look down at him, his arm braced against the wall. Adam watched the muscles in his arm tense and shift beneath his skin. His flower tattoo looked delicate and improbable on the thin skin of his hand.

“My room,” Ronan said, “is at the end. The last on the left.”

“Alright,” Adam said.

Ronan looked at him for a second, then turned and stared down the hall for a second longer. Then he pushed off the wall and walked down to the last door on the left. It fell open with the soft creak of mechanical tiredness.

The inside of Ronan’s room looked just like Ronan, except it was bright and personal at first glance instead of hiding what it contained. It was a cluttered mess of what Adam imagined to be the ideal childhood: toy trucks and mud-caked sneakers and expensive instruments forgotten on the floor, only half secured in their cases. A pair of swim goggles and four boxes of Legos and a giant stuffed bear. A twin-sized bed, with the comforter and pillows tucked in tight and a thick quilt thrown carelessly across it.

Ronan stepped into the room and, after another glance at Adam, he sat down on the bed.

Some things were not what Adam would have ever imagined: a teeter toy that swayed rapidly though nothing had disturbed it, a children’s book that lay face-up on the floor, its pages flipping back and forth as if pushed by a fan; the almost unnatural brightness and hue of the bedside lamp.

Adam walked over to the dresser. It was child-sized, only coming up to his hips. One of the drawers was half-open. Peeking out from it was a toy snake that blinked.

Adam looked at Ronan.

“Dream thing,” Ronan said. He was holding something small in his hand.

Adam went to sit beside him. The bed dipped under their weight. Ronan was warm against him.

Ronan rolled the thing between his thumb and finger. It was a green pill.

“If you want me to show you,” Ronan said, “I can use this.”

He said it like someone would say, _if you want to see this snake bite me, I can put my hand in its mouth._

“What does it do?” Adam asked. He leaned in to get a better look at the pill, but there was nothing written on it, no dosage, no brand. Ronan’s breath ghosted over the back of his neck.

Ridiculously, Adam thought about turning his head and kissing Ronan. It had been on the back of his mind all day - it had been on the back of his mind _for_ days - but it had been somewhat easy to ignore in the face of everything else going on. But in this small room, pressed against Ronan, it was hard to forget.

“I don’t really need it now, because I know how to take things out of my head, but when I was first learning I used these to make it easier. Now I just need it to fall asleep fast.”

“Is it safe?” Adam asked.

“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Ronan said. Then, “Kavinsky made them.”

“Kavinsky,” Adam said slowly. “He taught you.”

“Kind of,” Ronan admitted.

Adam wanted to ask what Kavinsky really was to Ronan. He wanted to know what Ronan really was to him. He wanted to kiss the complicated pull of Ronan’s mouth.

Ronan scooted away from Adam, then laid back on the bed. He was much too big for it; his height was all legs, and half of them hung off the end. Ronan rolled the pill between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced at Adam and away. “What do you want me to bring back?”

Adam half twisted his body to look at Ronan, his hands braced on the soft mattress, keeping him from toppling over every time Ronan shifted, trying to get comfortable. “You make it sound like you’re going to the grocery store.”

“So not a sandwich, then.”

“Bring back something you like,” Adam said. “Something magical.”

“Something magical,” Ronan repeated. He put the pill on his tongue. “Don’t watch if you’re gonna freak out,” he said.

“I’m not gonna freak out,” Adam told him.

Ronan closed his eyes. He swallowed the pill. His pulse visibly picked up, and stopped.

“Ronan,” Adam said.

Ronan did not move. He looked, for all intents and purposes, dead. Adam held his breath. He was not going to freak out.

With a violent jerk, Ronan came to life: his eyes shot open, the muscles in his arms seized, his pulse crashed again against the skin of his throat. Something green writhed in his hand. He looked from Adam to the thing in his hand, his eyes the only part of him moving with any semblance of control. After a moment of hesitation, Adam reached forward and took the impossible object from Ronan’s hands.

It was a plant. It had stopped writhing now that Adam had righted it, and its trailing vines, unencumbered by pot or soil, wrapped themselves around Adam’s wrist and fingers. It still swayed back and forth with more force than could be blamed on any breeze from the fan or air vents. With its mouth-like flowers, it snapped at the dust motes that lazily floated in the slats of sunlight coming in from the window.

Ronan sat up. “Fuck,” he said eloquently.

“You dreamt this,” Adam said, starting to freak out a little, unsure if he had really, truly believed Ronan could do it until he was holding the evidence in his hand. “It came from your head.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “I was going for a house plant lamp thing, but then I started thinking about how you’re always eating protein bars.” He reached a hand towards the plant, but drew back when it started to reach a vine towards him. “I think it’s sentient.”

“You can create something _sentient_?” Adam said.

“Chainsaw,” Ronan reminded him plainly.

Adam just sat there, staring between Ronan and the plant, feeling like he'd stepped into or stolen someone else's life. People like Ronan didn't just _happen_ to you.

“I don’t think my dorm allows pets,” Adam said uneasily. As if it had heard him, the plant tightened its vines around him.

“Here,” said Ronan, reaching to untangle the plant. His fingers were surprisingly warm on Adam’s wrist. As soon as Ronan had reached forward, the plant had stretched a vine towards him and now it was as attached to Ronan as it was to Adam.

Adam kept himself still until he was finally free. Ronan disentangled the plant from himself and set it on his dresser, where it immediately began to grab drawer knobs and picture frames.

Ronan turned away from the dresser and faced Adam. “Do you believe me now?”

Adam nodded, a little overwhelmed by Ronan’s strangeness and a lot overwhelmed by the position they were both in: Adam, sitting on the bed, almost casually, and Ronan, still breathing hard from his dreaming, standing just a few inches in front of him. He doubted Ronan noticed, but he still felt himself flush.

Adam looked around. “What else in here is a dream thing?”

It was a lot, apparently. Ronan showed him iridescent spinning tops and fire-breathing toy dragons, and demonstrated how the strange and whimsical knickknacks on the windowsill worked. He tapped a rusted spout on the wall and out poured shiny candies. The plastic windmill standing beside a photo of Ronan and Gansey began to sing and dance when he blew on it.

“So, pretty much everything,” Ronan said. He sat back down on the bed, this time on the side far away from Adam. “There’s actually something I wanted you to look at.”

He reached under the bed and produced a shimmery, almost translucent looking blanket. Adam brought one leg up onto the bed and folded it under him, turning towards Ronan.

Ronan gathered the blanket in his arms and held it close to his chest. He didn’t turn to face Adam yet. “I dreamt it the night before Gansey and I left for college,” he said. “I think that it might help us find the faerie ring.”

Adam reached forward. He touched the blanket, then slid his fingers into the juncture between Ronan’s thumb and open palm, not sure of his intent or _why_ he did it but sure that he didn’t want to move away. Ronan tilted his face down to the touch, his eyes veiled by long dark eyelashes.

“How does it work?” Adam asked, his voice a raspy thing in his throat.

“You put it around you, and, uh,” Ronan was red to the tips of his ears, and Adam couldn’t help the stupid, face-splitting smile that overcame him. “You see things. Or it helps you scry. I don’t really know.”

“Well,” Adam said. He pulled his hand away. He swallowed. “Let me try it.”

Ronan handed it to him. It was cool to the touch, and slipped against his skin like silk. He lifted it and swung it around to rest over his shoulders. Nothing immediately happened, so Adam ducked his head to completely cover himself.

“Wait,” Ronan said. “Keep your hand out. I’ll ground you, just in case.”

It was the practical thing to say, but it still made Adam flush.

He held Ronan’s hand, fingers interlaced tightly, wrist against wrist, rapid pulse against rapid pulse. He pulled the blanket all the way over his head. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was in another world entirely.

Adam stood. He’d been crouching on the forest floor, and leaves and dust fell from his shoulders and hair as if he’d been there for a very long time. Maybe he had. He couldn’t remember.

He was in the Charlottesville forest they often ventured in, the one with the first faerie ring. Adam couldn’t see it, and he didn’t know where in the forest he was, but he somehow knew exactly how to find it.

He began walking. Everything about the forest was the same, and everything was different. The trees shifted and shuddered above him, every sound of their leaves brushing as clear and clean as water over rock.

Adam walked under them, stumbled among their great, twisting roots, an insignificant human. He felt as if he were in a state of over-conscious hypnagogia, seeing everything as too real and too dreamlike.

Dreamlike. That made him think of Ronan. He remembered Ronan, in the realest sense. He was back in the farmhouse with Adam’s body, with _Adam_ , holding his hand and watching him intently so he didn’t get too far away.

But Adam didn’t feel like he’d get too far away. He felt like he couldn’t get far enough. Ronan had given him this thing, this thing that made everything so clear, and Adam was going to use it to get exactly what he needed.

He started walking faster. He would be at the ring in less than a minute, and there would be a faerie waiting for him. Adam would talk to it. They would understand each other. He would figure out how to get rid of it and get Noah back.

The trees shuddered and shuddered, sounding more frightening now. Adam stopped and looked up at them. They shook at him, menacingly. Leaves fell and fell but not one fell on Adam.

 _Stranger_ , a voice whispered. Unfamiliar. It was a tree, or trees. Of course it was. Of course it was. Of course-

“I’ve been here before,” Adam said. “This is exactly where I should be.”

And the trees were quiet. And Adam walked on.

He came to the faerie ring differently than he had before, in real life, or in whatever other dimension or time his real life was. There was no following of the stream downhill, and no picking across rocks to avoid soiling his shoes. Adam simply decided to arrive at the faerie ring, and he did.

But it wasn’t the right one. It was not even a ring; a single line of mushrooms and stones ran in an almost indiscernible curve across the beaten path Adam stood on. He stopped in front of them. He knew better than to step inside.

He turned around, and was unmistakably in Henrietta.

Adam didn’t need to look behind him to know he was still standing at the cusp of the new ring; he could feel its power, like he could feel the sun on his face and neck. Henrietta forest stretched out endlessly in front of him. Which meant that the giant ring was in Henrietta.

He started walking. He knew where the giant ring was now, but there was still something else he needed.

Standing alone on the path in front of him as if suddenly called into existence was a tree. An oak. It was gnarled, ancient, weathered by more than age. Adam stopped in front of it. There was a cavity rotted through it that looked more like a black hole than anything else. He put his hand to the edge, where the bark gave way to blackness, and it crumbled under his fingers, brittle as charcoal.

Somehow, Adam knew that he was supposed to step inside the tree. And once he knew, he did.

It was warm, and moist, and smelled like life and death at the same time. It was the smell of home, of too-hot summers spent in the car garage to avoid going inside, of baggy clothes and ugly bruises and forged doctor's notes; it was sudden and overwhelming, and it choked Adam with a sick sort of longing. He closed his eyes against it.

“ _Adam_ ,” he heard Ronan say.

Adam knelt down. He pressed his hands into the dead foliage in front of him, feeling the moisture from the soil and moss on the forest floor seep into the knees of his jeans. He was no longer inside the tree.

He was aware of Ronan, far away inside the farmhouse, but here with Adam, too, a strange-looking little girl at his side. There was something blurry about them both, something just off enough that Adam couldn’t have mistaken it for the real Ronan.

Adam looked into himself. This was him, and the Adam in the tree was him, and the Adam sitting on Ronan’s bed was him. He felt so removed from himself, so much a stranger to who he was, confused as to whether it mattered which Adam he paid attention to.

This one. He would pay attention to this one, for now. For as long as it took.

Adam blinked, and kneeling in front of him on the other side of the ring was a faerie. It was shimmering, dead, emitting cold like a heater emitted warmth; scorching, everywhere. It opened its mouth, perhaps to say something, perhaps to cast a malicious spell. Its eyes were bright with feeling. Adam could see that it hated him. He could tell that it wanted him dead.

But it couldn’t hurt Adam, not here. There was nothing it could say to him that would help, nothing it could do to change anything. Adam didn’t need it after all; he knew what he was going to do. He had thought the faeries and what they wanted mattered, but they didn’t. He stood and turned away from the faerie.

He looked across the clearing and there was Gansey, looking incredibly substantial and real. He wore a crown and armor, and his expression was the most vivid thing in the forest.

For a moment - not even a moment, a fraction of a second - Adam regretted seeing Gansey like this, because he very acutely realized the second he laid eyes on him that this Gansey had power when Adam didn’t. There was something of the ley line under his skin, something like magic in his eyes.

The Adam in the forest understood what this meant.

He felt the ley lines pulse thrum frantically, desperately, in his own throat. Like it was taking one last breath. Like it was saying goodbye.

“Adam,” Gansey said joyously, “it’s time to wake up.”

+

Adam let the blanket fall from his shoulders. He gripped Ronan’s hand tightly. “The ring is here,” he said. “In that forest. Cabeswater. And I know how to destroy it.”

Ronan’s voice was barely a breath. “Calm down, you asshole,” he said. “You almost died.”

Adam looked at him. “What?”

Ronan made a noise like he was in pain. Then, using his crushing grip on Adam’s hand, he pulled Adam against him.

Instinctively, Adam drew into himself, folding his arms in against his stomach. But he didn’t pull away. Ronan held him close, one hand held captive between them, one arm around Adam’s back, his face pressed fever-hot into Adam’s neck.

“We have to stop,” Ronan said. He sounded angry. “We have to tell Gansey before we do anything else.”

“I’m fine, Ronan,” Adam said, startled.

“ _You almost died_ ,” Ronan said again. “You stopped breathing for a few seconds.”

There was anger in Ronan’s voice, that emotion Adam knew well. But under it was fear. Fear for _Adam_.

Slowly, he brought his free hand up to touch the nape of Ronan’s neck. He thought about flattening his hand and pulling Ronan tighter against him, and what that would mean. He did.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I got carried away.”

Ronan was quiet for a few moments, and Adam was quiet, and they were both very still, just listening to each other’s breaths. Adam could feel Ronan against him. His grip was crushing around Adam’s hand and back, and his face was pressed against Adam’s skin.

Adam could feel Ronan’s cheeks, his lips. He scratched lightly at the back of Ronan’s neck and felt his eyelashes flutter.

Ronan’s grip around Adam shifted, causing his shirt to ride up. Adam felt the shocking warmth from the tips of fingers on his bare skin. Ronan didn’t move for a moment, and Adam made some sort of embarrassing noise. Then Ronan rode his fingers up the bumps of Adam’s spine.

“Ronan,” Adam said, and his voice broke off halfway through the name.

Ronan leaned back and looked at Adam. Adam didn’t let go of the back of his neck. Ronan slid his hand from Adam’s back over and up to cup his cheek.

Adam closed his eyes. Ronan kissed him, and kissed him, and Adam felt the faerie ring, not too far away, alive and hateful between them.


	11. planning, planning

Gansey was making Adam very nervous.

Ronan had made Adam call him in the car, an hour out from Charlottesville. “We know where the giant faerie ring is,” Adam had said, per Ronan’s instructions. “We’re on the way now.”

Gansey had been waiting at the door when they arrived. Ronan had walked past him into the living room, keys clattering and boots thumping as he threw and kicked them away from himself. He’d also grabbed Chainsaw from his room, and she flapped with excitement now. Adam had gone straight to the kitchen - where Blue and Henry expectantly loitered - and sat on the counter.

Ronan strode past Gansey to the fridge. He ripped it open and selected a beer. He used his teeth to get the cap off, offered it to Adam, then took a sip when Adam shook his head no.

“Gansey,” he said. “Stop pacing.”

“You haven’t given us any actual information!” Gansey exclaimed, clearly frazzled. They all were. He stopped pacing for long enough to cross his arms and run his thumb over his lower lip. Then he started up again.

“You and Adam went to the Barns, and Adam scryed. And,” Gansey pointed a finger at Adam, “you know how to fix everything now, but you can’t explain _how?_ ”

Adam was taken aback at the sudden attention. He considered carefully how to reply; both Gansey and Ronan had been stepping around the subject of Ronan’s dreaming, so skillfully that Henry and Blue hadn’t noticed anything. Adam was impressed. They had done the same with him.

It made him wonder how many secrets hung between the two of them.

“I did explain,” Adam said plainly. He took his glasses off to rub at his eyes; he’d had a headache since scrying at the Barns, and Gansey’s intense line of questioning wasn’t helping it. “It’ll kind of be like when we moved that water bottle to fix the line, except it’s not a bottle. It’s the actual line **.**  And it has something to do with you,” this was directed at Gansey, “but I don’t know exactly what or how yet.”

“With me!” said Gansey.

Ronan snorted.

Adam rubbed at his eyes again. “I think the faeries know what we’re planning,” he said. “The line’s felt different since I scryed at the Barns. It feels different even now.”

“Different how?” Gansey asked, in his most scholarly tone and with his most scholarly expression.

“Louder,” Adam said.

“And Noah hasn’t been around,” Blue said. “At least not very much.”

Adam nodded. “I saw him last weekend, but not for long.”

Blue wrapped her arms around herself. “I called home and asked for advice, but I didn’t get anything that’ll be much help.” She was sitting on the counter as well now. Her socked feet were very far from the floor. “They can help with readings, and ley lines to an extent, but they’ve never dealt with faeries.”

Henry was looking increasingly anxious. “So, we just go up to this ancient magical ring thing and hope what Adam thinks might work does work?”

Ronan shrugged. “Yeah.”

“No,” said Gansey. “Well, kind of,” he amended. “I want to take a week to study this and find out what I can, but ultimately yes, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Adam looked at Henry. “You don’t have to go.”

Henry smiled at him, a little uncomfortably. “Yes, I do have to.”

Blue leaned past Henry to see Adam. “Henry and I are as much a part of this as any of you,” she said, not quite defensive but not quite placid, either.

She was right, and Adam was tired, and it was late, and he really didn’t care. He just wanted to get back to his dorm room, haunted or not, and go to sleep.

“Jane has spoken,” Gansey said. “We’re all friends, and we’re all in this together, right?”

“High School Musical,” said Ronan.

“ _Ronan,”_ said Gansey. “Right?”

Ronan set Chainsaw down on the counter. She hopped over to Adam expectantly. Adam pet the soft feathers on her beak. Ronan watched them with an unreadable expression.

“Right,” Ronan said.

+

Ronan felt too keyed-up, even after taking Adam home, like there was too much of him inside himself.  They had gone to the Barns, and Adam had scryed like the magical freak he was, and they had kissed in Ronan’s childhood bedroom.

It had been one of the more eventful days of his life.

Ronan parked the BMW outside his and Gansey’s apartment. It wasn’t the time, or the place, but he just sat there for a while, thinking about Adam.

It felt like an occupation, a complete act. Trying to organize the feelings he harbored for Adam was an ongoing and endlessly confusing project. It had stopped being painful a while ago; now Ronan indulged in it.

He eventually went inside, and of course Gansey was awake, sitting in his bed with books all around him. “I’m trying to figure out how Glendower fits into all of this,” he said, looking up at Ronan. His wireframes were slightly crooked, and his hair tousled badly. “But I’m coming up with nothing.”

Ronan looked at Gansey. _Adam thinks he’s dead,_ he felt like he should say, but couldn’t, and he didn’t want to, anyway. He couldn’t say that to Gansey, not when Gansey had spent the better part of his life believing in and looking for magic, not when there was so much magic around them now that Glendower seemed more real and alive than ever. He couldn’t.

_Glendower isn’t the answer_ , Adam had said. But Adam hadn’t been sure. He’d only been telling Ronan his theory.

Ronan still believed. He’d seen and felt and heard too much not to. If there was a Glendower to be found, then Gansey would find him. And his wish would fix everything.

But if it didn’t. If it didn’t. If Glendower truly wasn’t the answer, then they needed Adam. They needed him to be right.

“Well,” Ronan said to Gansey, “keep fucking looking.”

Gansey smiled good-naturedly. “I see we’re in a good mood tonight. Want to talk about it?”

“It,” said Ronan.

“Is it something about Noah?” Gansey asked, almost hopefully, because, in a way, Noah and the faeries were much easier and simpler subjects than Adam and dreaming.

“No. It's Adam.”

Gansey nodded; probably he had guessed **.** “How was it?”

“He thought I was fucking with him. He made me prove it.”

“And then?”

Ronan thought about what happened after. Adam’s amazement, unencumbered by stretched-thin logical explanations. How he had used the dream blanket with no hesitation. How scary it had been when he’d stopped breathing.

“I proved it,” Ronan said. “And now he’s part of the coalition.”

Gansey made a face. “Don’t call it that.” He closed his book and propped his chin in his hands. “He’s our friend. He’s the person you like.”

“The person I like.”

“Don’t start denying it now,” Gansey said.

Ronan rolled his eyes and climbed onto Gansey’s bed. A few books fell to the floor in his wake. “You like that waitress?”

“Her name is Jane.”

“It's Blue. You like her?”

“I like her fine.”

“And Henry?”

“I like Henry fine also.”

Gansey was clearly embarrassed to say it out loud. But he said it anyways.

Ronan looked Gansey in the eyes. “I like Adam,” he said. “A lot.”

Gansey smiled and leaned back against the headboard. He regarded Ronan through his short eyelashes. “I’m glad. And I think Adam likes you. A lot.”

Ronan smiled and grabbed Gansey’s book from him.

He flipped through it for a minute. Gansey had underlined and highlighted in what looked to be a purposeful manner, but there were just as many frantic question marks written into the margins to balance it out and render it meaningless.

“Did you find anything out? Anything at all?” Ronan asked him.

Gansey shook his head. “I found out some things about fairies, and a few new things about Glendower. But nothing about them both and nothing that I can piece them together with.” He cast a despaired look over the books surrounding him. It wasn’t very late, but still the hours spent stressing over this showed in the lines of his eyes  and in the dissatisfied pull of his mouth.

“You should go over this with Adam,” Ronan suggested. “It might make sense to him.”

Gansey ran a hand over his imaginary 5-o’clock shadow. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I would have tonight, but I didn’t want to make him stay out late.” He looked back at Ronan. “Do you really think he can do it?”

Ronan nodded. “He learned something when he was in Cabeswater. I don’t know if he knows what it is yet, but I think he will when we need him to.”

Gansey ground his teeth, something he rarely ever did, even when he was at his wits end. “Were you there with him?”

Ronan shook his head. “I didn’t know for sure how the dream blanket worked yet, so no.”

“But you trust him,” Gansey said, not really a question.

“I trust him,” Ronan told him. He gave Gansey back his book, just as something buzzed at the other side of the room. It was Ronan’s phone.

“Since when is that thing in here?” Ronan asked Gansey.

“Chainsaw,” Gansey told him.

When Ronan said nothing, Gansey sighed. “Are you going to get that?”

Ronan got up. He went to his phone and picked it up. Glowing on the screen was a text from Kavinsky.

_who knew ghosts had so much energy?_

Ronan’s blood went cold.

_You’re with Noah?_ he sent back.

Kavinsky replied immediately. _He’s been here for hours. u better catch up_

Ronan looked up at Gansey. “Noah’s with Kavinsky,” he said. “He’s been there for hours.”

Gansey’s face turned ashen. “Is he alright?”

Ronan doubted anyone - especially someone like Noah - could be alright after that many hours in such a situation. There would always be at least a minimal amount of collateral damage. “I don’t know.”

Gansey looked at the books in front of him, and then back at Ronan. “Do you have this?” he asked.

“I can handle Kavinsky,” Ronan said.

Gansey looked torn, but he nodded. “I know you’ll be smart. Get him out of there.”

Ronan grabbed his keys and shoved his phone into his pocket. He called Chainsaw over. He turned for the door.

“And Ronan,” Gansey said.

Ronan half-turned, a hand braced on the door frame. “Yeah?”

“Keep your phone on.”

+

Noah was not at the drag strip, but at a discreetly hidden location in its epicenter: the skate bowls.

Ronan wouldn’t have looked for him here at first, or even at a desperate second or third. He’d only known because of the pictures Kavinsky had sent: one of Kavinsky’s own bloodied knuckles, and one of Noah, on his side on the ground, the backend of a skateboard leaning against his stomach.

Fear was a live and abhorrent thing in Ronan’s chest.

It didn’t take him long to find Kavinsky. He was sitting at the edge of one of the larger bowls, his legs dangling over the side, uncaring for who might run into him or whom he might cause to fall. His dogs were nowhere to be seen. Leaning against him was Noah, his head on Kavinsky’s shoulder, drugged or asleep.

Ronan walked up to them. He stopped just a pace away from Kavinsky. Kavinsky had heard him approach, and turned his head to give him a long and heavy look. “Hey, Lynch,” he said. He turned his upper body towards Ronan, not seeming to mind that this caused Noah to slump awkwardly over himself onto Kavinsky’s lap.

Get Noah, and get out. Ronan balled his hands into fists. He had never hated Kavinsky more.

Kavinsky ran his bloodied fingers through Noah’s colorless hair. Noah shifted but didn’t open his eyes. There was a smear of blood across his cheek, but he seemed to be otherwise unharmed. Ronan didn’t know if Noah _could_ be harmed. At least not physically. “He’s feeling good tonight,” Kavinsky said. “Give him few minutes and he’ll be back at it again.”

“No.” Ronan said. “Give him to me.”

Kavinsky’s hand went still, and he stared at Ronan for a moment. Ronan stared back at him. Looking at Kavinsky now, he couldn’t even begin to understand what in Kavinsky had so enraptured him in the past. He had a few good qualities, and a lot of bad ones, but Ronan didn’t need any of them. He didn’t even miss them anymore. What he wanted for from Kavinsky that was bad he had in himself, and what he wanted from Kavinsky that was good he could easily find in his friends. He didn’t want Kavinsky anymore. He didn’t need him.

He was done.

“Fine,” Kavinsky said. He stared at Ronan for a moment longer, then closed his eyes and shrugged, like he didn’t care at all, like he never had. “You want him? Take him.”

Ronan crouched down and grabbed Noah by the arms. He smelt of pot and sweat and he was cold, beyond cold. Ronan hauled him up, even less gentle than Kavinsky. Half awake and half there, Noah didn’t seem to notice or care at all.

“Hey,” Ronan said, jostling Noah, hating the lifelessness of his face. His fingertips were ice where they pressed into Noah’s skin. “Wake up. I’m not carrying you to the car.”

Noah’s eyes cracked open, and his mouth broke into a smile. “Ronan,” he murmured. “You came to get me?”

“Yes,” Ronan said, pulling Noah away from Kavinsky. “I’m taking you home.”

+

Ronan kept his grip tight on Noah up until the BMW, and then released him at the passenger’s side door. Noah silently climbed in and buckled himself up as Ronan made his way to the driver's seat.

Ronan immediately got the car started and got himself, Noah, and Chainsaw away from the strip. The night was in its fullest, most glorious stage; it was dark and hungry, and too late for any person or thing or emotion of the daytime to be awake. Everything was ripe for the taking; potential screamed itself hoarse in the growl of the engine and in the shiny black of Ronan’s phone screen.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, until Ronan slowed the BMW and pulled into an abandoned lot with a single streetlight at its vertex. He killed the engine and turned to Noah, but Noah was staring at Chainsaw, who perched nervously on the door handle.

“Would you ever let me teach her how to skateboard?” Noah asked Ronan.

“No,” Ronan said. Then, after a lengthy pause, he allowed, “Maybe.”

Noah smiled. Then he pulled his knees into his chest, curled over himself, and, facing Ronan, he closed his eyes.

Ronan sighed. Gansey had told him to bring Noah straight home – _Adam will be worried_ – but he didn’t want to only bring him home. He wanted to bring him home fixed, or at least with some answers. Bringing Noah home tonight didn’t mean much if he was just going to disappear again tomorrow.

It was on nights like these that the longing for home became a live thing, eating at him until he was his wildest and most terrible self. There was too much uncertainty, too much left to the imagination. Ronan’s mind swung wildly between possibilities the night held and spiraled into what they might mean. He was used to this feeling, but it would have been unbearable if he didn’t have Adam. Adam, and Gansey, and Noah, and even Blue and Henry. God, he was so grateful for them all.

Noah opened his eyes. “You worry so much,” he told Ronan.

Ronan turned to face him. “You shouldn’t go to K,” he said. “He doesn’t do you any good.”

“You go to him,” said Noah.

“No, I don’t,” Ronan told him. “Not anymore.”

“You used to, so you still do. But that’s okay.” Noah ran his hand absentmindedly along the edge of his seat. “All times are the same.” He was quiet for a moment, then went still. In a very small voice, he said, “He reminds me of my friend, from when I was alive.”

“Your friend?”

“My best friend.”

“You had a best friend like Kavinsky?”

Noah shrugged. “Not really… like him. It’s not him; it’s the energy around him. And I don’t really mean to anyways.”

“What do you mean?” Ronan asked. He knew that much of what Noah did was beyond his control, but he couldn’t believe that so much of his visiting Kavinsky was accidental; It had to be a self-enforced side-effect. Noah had been getting more self-destructive and spacy since they’d found out about his ghostliness. It wasn’t very unlike his usual demeanor, but Ronan noticed the difference. It reminded him of himself when he knew Declan was on the way over.

“It’s all about sacrifice,” Noah said. His voice was still very quiet. Ronan could hear the hum of insects outside over it.  “That’s what the ley line understands. That’s its language: energy and intention. But sometimes things go wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kavinsky doesn’t have anything, except for energy. That’s how he reminds me of my friend. Because, in the end, he didn’t have anything either.”

Ronan was done asking questions. He would just let Noah talk.

“Him and I were like you and Gansey,” Noah said. “He was obsessed with ley lines, and I was just happy to be obsessed with him. It was just… a game, for me. But it wasn’t for him. It was okay, but then he lost everything, and it wasn’t.”

There was something in Noah’s voice - a tremor.

“He wanted to harness the ley lines power,” Noah went on, “and to do that he needed to make a sacrifice, so he used me.”

“He used you…” Ronan said, like he didn’t understand. But he did. He just didn’t want to.

“It wasn’t all his fault, I think…” Noah said. “I think he thought it was the best he could do. He was desperate.”

“He killed you,” Ronan said. It hurt to say it out loud, and it hurt even more to see what saying it did to Noah’s expression.

Noah didn’t respond. He was playing with a hair-tie he must have picked up at the strip, or possibly he had gotten it from Blue. His hands were blurry and insignificant in his lap.

“Noah,” Ronan said. “I’m so sorry.”

Noah shrugged it off, like he shrugged everything off. But Ronan could see that he was hurting, and that he was looked much less real than before.

Ronan wished, probably for the first time, that he were more skilled at comforting someone than fighting them. But he wasn’t.

He said nothing, and Noah said nothing.

They sat and listened to the buzz of insects, and the occasional rush of a car on the road beside them. Ronan’s phone buzzed on the dashboard. Presumably it was Gansey.

“Does Adam know what he’s going to do?” Noah asked suddenly.

“He thinks he will.”

“I’m not so sure,” Noah said. “You need to watch him, Ronan.”

The way Noah said it made Ronan nervous. “Why?”

Noah drew a line with his finger across the fogged window. Hundreds of stars shone through the clearing it made. Noah let his hand drop. “I’m worried he’ll give too much away.”

+

Ronan hoped desperately that Adam wasn’t asleep.

He knocked, tentatively, a third time. Noah stood, useless and listless, beside him. Gansey had called a few minutes ago, and Noah held the phone tight to his ear now, listening and not saying much.

Ronan wouldn’t knock for much longer. If Adam was asleep, Noah could stay with Ronan and Gansey for the night. Ronan didn’t want to wake him. But he so badly wanted to see him.

He knocked one last time. This time, there was some shuffling, and a door slammed shut somewhere inside. Ronan heard the careful patter of Adam’s feet across the hard floor.

Adam opened the door. He didn’t look surprised to see Ronan and Noah standing in the hallway; Gansey must have given him a heads-up. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and plaid boxer shorts. His hair was wet. Some water had dripped onto his shoulders and soaked through to his skin. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think you guys would get here so fast.”

“You know how I drive,” Ronan said.

Still clutching Ronan’s phone to his ear, Noah walked between them and into the room.

Adam turned his head and watched Noah for a moment. The nape of his neck was flushed.

“So, Parrish,” Ronan said. “You get a call back about that internship?”

Adam turned back to Ronan. He smiled. “Not yet. You want to dream me one?”

Ronan smiled back. Thinly, like he was annoyed. He wasn’t. He walked past Adam and into the kitchen. He’d never been in Adam’s dorm before. Even with Noah nearby, it made him feel illicit and intimate, charged and strange.

Ronan heard the door close behind him, and then Adam’s soft footsteps following his own. He could tell from the sound that Adam was barefoot, and he didn’t know why that fact made him feel so flustered. There was a single light on in the kitchen. Ronan shrugged his jacket off, tossed it onto the garbage can for lack of a chair, and went over to lean against the counter.

Adam made a disapproving sound. He picked the jacket up and set it on the counter.

“Counters for food,” Ronan pointed out. “But you don’t have much of that anyway.”

Adam merely looked at him, like Ronan was a wild animal that had wandered into his house, and Adam was too interested to see what he might do to kick him out.

There was a box of protein bars on the counter. Ronan pointed at it accusingly. “Is this that whole-grain shit you’re always eating?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. He went and leaned against the counter opposite Ronan.

Ronan cleared his throat. The only way to do this was to ignore that he was nervous. “Adam,” he said.

“Ronan,” Adam replied.

Ronan cleared his throat. Again. “Are you busy this weekend?”

Adam thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m going to the parlor to work a late shift on Saturday, and I need to study for a test, but besides that, no.”

“Okay,” Ronan said. “We’re getting real food. Sunday. And we’re doing some extra credit shit at a museum for a class I’m failing.”

Adam crossed his arms over his chest. He was smiling. “’Real food’?” he said. “Are you asking me out on a date, Lynch?”

“Yes, Parrish,” Ronan said. “I believe I am.”

Adam just grinned. Standing there and staring at him, waiting for a definite yes, Ronan realized that he would do just about anything to see that expression on Adam’s face. And all it had taken was a small amount of courage.

Still smiling, Adam pushed off from the counter he was leaning on and into Ronan’s space. He grabbed Ronan’s hands and tangled their fingers together. Ronan flushed. He closed his eyes and leaned down to kiss Adam. He could feel Adam’s lips smiling against his own; it did something stupid and complicated to his already stammering heart.

Adam brought their joined hands up between them. He brushed his lips across Ronan’s knuckles – his eyes were still closed – and Ronan felt a heady, intense rush of affection for him. “I like you,” Ronan said, so quietly that Adam wouldn’t have heard had they not been so close. “So much.”

Adam brushed his lips across Ronan’s knuckles again. Then he pressed the back of Ronan’s hand to his warm cheek. “I like you so much too,” he said.

Ronan could feel the wet ends of Adam’s hair on his fingertips. He could feel Adam’s pulse against his own.

“Ronan?” Noah called, as he walked in from the other room. Adam stepped away from Ronan, even though he knew Noah could read their thoughts whenever he wanted. Noah seemed oblivious, though. He was holding Ronan’s phone against his chest with both hands, and somehow that, or something else about him, reminded Ronan of Matthew.

Noah gave Ronan his phone. “Gansey wants you to get back soon,” he said. “He said he found something important.”

“About the faeries?” Adam asked in a rush.

Noah shrugged. “He didn’t say. Sorry.”

“Go,” Adam said to Ronan. “And tell me about it tomorrow.”

Ronan grinned. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

+

Ronan had forgotten his jacket.

Adam noticed it just a few minutes after Ronan left. It wouldn’t have been worth it to call him back for it when they were going to see each other – or at least talk on the phone – tomorrow anyways. It wasn’t very cold outside, and Adam was sure Ronan had plenty of other jackets at home.

The dorm was as cold as it always was, and Noah had already gone to bed. Adam picked up the jacket and held it up to his face. The only person there to witness this embarrassing display was himself.

It was a black leather jacket, old – Ronan looked like someone who would rob the elderly when he wore it – and so worn from use that it was soft. And it smelled like Ronan, too: gasoline and earth. Adam carried it over to his bed, telling himself that he would hang it on the post, where he’d see it first thing in the morning and would remember to return it.

Adam did not hang it on the post. Noah’s back was to him, so he crawled into bed with the jacket. There was no one to see.

Adam slipped under the covers. He pulled the jacket close to him and slowly, so slowly that maybe he could pretend he wasn't doing it, he turned his face into the fabric and pressed it in. He took in a breath, let it out. Took another in and held it.

The scent of grass and gasoline was faint, but with his eyes closed and his other senses being willfully ignored, it overwhelmed Adam. He turned over onto his stomach and bunched his hands in Ronan’s jacket, breathing it in until it was all he could focus on.

His thoughts, triggered by the smell, ran away from him. He remembered Ronan, watching him from across the room. Ronan’s hands gentle and curious on his stomach, his thighs. Ronan leaning over the gearshift to kiss him. Ronan’s warmth, his realness. The way he’d said _I like you._

Adam shifted from memory to imagination with no conscious intent. The possibilities assailed him; Ronan’s fingers wrapped around him, curled inside him. He thought about what it would feel like to have Ronan in his mouth, what it would feel like to be on his knees for his own selfish wants and needs and for nothing else, for no one else except Ronan. He thought about how it would feel to have Ronan’s hands in his hair, or cupping his jaw; how he would sound when he came.

Adam almost groaned with wanting, with _needing._ The thoughts didn't stop. They came vividly, without pause, making Adam’s breath come faster. And hard.

Adam pressed his palm to his mouth. He couldn't. Not here. Not when Noah was sleeping just a few feet away. The idea had consumed him, made him not himself. He couldn’t let himself go to it, not now. He breathed in the familiar, boring scent of his own skin until the excitement in him burned away, and then, still holding Ronan’s jacket close, he slept.

+

That night, Gansey did not sleep.

The fact that he was awake wasn’t what made this night stand out amongst other countless, sleepless nights. It was _why_ he was awake. He wasn’t awake because he couldn’t help it; he was awake because he was talking to Blue on the phone and he never wanted to hang up.

They’ve had these a few times now, these late-night and early-morning phone calls. They never lasted long enough. Gansey spent the days and nights between them anticipating what witty thing he could say to Blue next.

Ronan was asleep on Gansey’s bed, gently snoring. Gansey sat on the floor. He didn’t mind it.

“I hope you don’t have some big idea in your head that you’re planning on leaving me out of,” Blue said, her voice playful and soft. “I would be very upset if I were to miss out on something amazing.”

She was using Henry’s phone. Gansey wondered if that meant Henry was awake, too, and if he was listening.

“I wouldn’t,” Gansey assured her. “Whatever we end up doing, I know you’ll make sure to be in the middle of it.”

“Of course,” Blue said.

“Of course,” Gansey repeated.

There really wasn’t much to say. Gansey just liked to hear her voice. And he liked to know that she was awake, just to talk to him. That she stayed up until she couldn’t anymore.

“I’m going to sleep,” Blue said, after a minute or two. “Call if you end up going faerie hunting in the middle of the night.”

“I will,” Gansey promised. “Goodnight.”

There was another beat of silence, then, “Goodnight, Gansey.”

The line went dead.

Gansey dropped his phone from his ear and held it against his chest. He was smiling. Stupidly. Ridiculously. He knew that his feelings for Blue were out of control, but he had no intention of reining them in.

He couldn’t help that he was falling in love. He couldn’t help any of it.

+

That night, Ronan dreamt.

He sat in the dark at the Barns, and wasn't aware of much at first except that his hands were tied behind the chair he sat in. Tightly. It hurt, but it was far from unbearable. Ronan tugged at the binds, testing to see how strong they were but not putting in any effort to break them. He wasn’t worried. This was his dream, after all.

A dark, hooded figure stood in front of him. _Greywaren,_ it said. _Have you given up?_

Ronan looked up at the figure, but couldn’t see its face. He wasn’t worried, but he didn’t understand. He had never come to the Barns in a dream before.

“I don’t get why I’m here,” he said. He couldn’t hear the trees, and Orphan Girl was nowhere to be seen. It was strange. It felt unsafe.

_This is where you first knew me,_ the figure said. It stepped closer to Ronan – it was close enough to touch him now. It lifted an arm to point across the unidentifiable clearing. The sleeve of its cloak fell back to expose a skeletal hand. Ronan followed its finger to an object on the ground. His vision blurred: it was a blood-spattered tire iron.

_Death._

“Why,” Ronan said, with effort, “am I here.”

_This is a reminder_ , Death said, _I am much closer than you think._

Ronan could feel himself slipping from the dream. But this wasn’t a normal dream. This wasn’t only in his head.

Ronan yanked at the binds holding him. He wasn’t trying to break free; the pain brought everything back into focus. He glared up into Death’s featureless face. “Is someone going to die?” he asked. “One of my friends? Me?”

_Parts of one can die while the whole still lives,_ Death said. _Do not think so much in black-and-white._

“What does that _mean_.” Ronan growled, but it was too late. The dream faded, and then was gone.

Ronan sat bolt upright in Gansey’s bed. He looked down. Gansey had fallen asleep, and was spread out on the floor on his back, his phone cradled against his ear, gently snoring. Ronan didn’t remember falling asleep, and already his memory of the dream was dying.

+

That night, Noah drifted.

His existence as a ghost was sometimes a terrible thing, for him and for those he cared about. Sometimes it made him disappear, and sometimes it made him sad, and sometimes it made him dangerous.

Noah did his best to stay away when he knew he was losing control. He never wanted anyone to get hurt.

But tonight – or at least in this moment, this particular segment of the never-ending circle that was time – there was nothing of the ley line awake but him. There was nothing to steal him away, nothing to make him anything other than himself. There would be soon, but there wasn’t right now.

So, he decided to drift. He visited Adam first. As the years went on, time seemed to become less meaningful to Noah. He rarely ever did things in chronological order. But Adam was closest, and Noah wasn’t sure if he’d return here tonight, anyways. He would say goodbye, just to be sure.

He was always saying goodbye.

He knelt beside Adam’s bed. Adam’s back was to him. His sheet and blanket had fallen back to expose his shoulders; when Adam slept, it was fitful – he moved around a lot, and he always seemed to be curled in on himself - shoulders hunched up, arms drawn in - like he was cowering, or preparing for a blow. But tonight Ronan’s jacket was balled up in his fists and shoved under his chin, and he didn’t tremble as Noah watched him.

What a fantastic group they were, Noah’s friends. They were fierce, and loyal, and true. He loved them, and they loved each other. He hoped they would be okay. He hoped they would be enough…

Noah pulled Adam’s blanket back over his shoulders before he let himself fade away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you for reading, for commenting, for keeping me and this story going. I appreciate you all so much. there are only a few chapters left!!! thank you for sticking with me <3

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [chloe](http://lieutenantriza.tumblr.com/) for beta editing! 
> 
> and thanks so much for reading!!! i hope you liked it :) please leave kudos/comment if you did - feedback of any kind is crazy appreciated. it keeps me alive, i swear 
> 
> find me on[ tumblr](http://thewarlocksbitch.tumblr.com)!!! my [ask box](https://thewarlocksbitch.tumblr.com/ask) is always open (for prompts and anything else!)


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